I’ve found myself struggling to find the motivation to get anything done and found that the less I did the worse I felt and the worse I felt the less I did. One morning I woke up with a story in my head that I had read years ago. It was the story of the $35,000 list. I read this story in a book by Mary Kay Ash the founder of Mary Kay Inc. called Miracles Happen.

The story of the $35,000 dollar list is about a man named Ivy Lee who was an expert on efficiency and Charles Schwab who was president of a company called Bethlehem Steel. Ivy contacted Charles and told him that he could increase his efficiency and sales if he could spend 15 minutes with each of the executives and in three months Charles could send him a check for how much he thought his help had been worth.

Ivy went around to each of the executives and he asked them to do just one thing. Every evening they were to write down six of the most important things they needed to do the next day and then rank them in order of importance. Then each morning begin with the first item on the list and work your way down. If you didn’t get something done you put it on the next days list. At the end of three months efficiency and sales had increased so much that Charles sent Ivy a check for $35,000.

I knew after recalling this story that was what I needed. I went a step further to increase my accountability by sharing with my husband what my six most important task of the day were and then reporting back at the end of the day how I did. After a couple weeks of forcing myself to get those six items done I found it wasn’t such a struggle and that I didn’t need to be accountable to my husband anymore. I could do it for myself. I also noticed that the items on my list where larger task. At the beginning they were pretty simple to keep me from feeling overwhelmed.

I’ve always been a list maker. Sometimes I write down something I have already done just so I can cross it off. I guess it just makes me feel like I’ve accomplished more. The problem I’ve had with my list making is I’ll write down 20 things to do in one day and just be overwhelmed by the list and not even try. When I just list 6 things to do it seems much more manageable. I also take into consideration what my priorities in life are when I make this list. Then I’m only doing those things that really matter.