I replaced my 'to do' list with an 'I want' list. Here's what happened

“You’ll never be happy if you keep focusing on the things you should be doing.”

Wait, what?

My session with my life coach had begun the same way it had for a while: me telling her I was feeling burnt out.

Things were being added to my ‘to do’ list quicker than I could tick them off.

My phone had been vibrating non-stop with questions from the women coming to the hen do I was organising for my sister and on top of that, I’d taken on various extra-curricular projects. This meant my evenings were spent answering emails and eating dinner too close to midnight.

This isn’t a 'woe is me' tale - but I was tired.

“How many of the things you do are things you feel you have to do?” my life coach asked.

It was a tricky question to answer.

Life feels incredibly high-pressured for people in their 20s, like I am. Society, parents and peer expectations have always existed, but social media is comparatively new.

Already, studies have found our digital portrayals of life – and the constant desire to cultivate online perfection – can have harmful effects on our mental health.

While we can try to remain mindful of this online fakery, it’s easy to fall victim to feelings of ‘I should be doing this’, and ‘I’m missing out on that’, which come on when we spend too much time browsing our various feeds.

I could try to cut that out – I could learn to embrace the power of ‘no’ – but the reality is there are still things I have to do, commitments I’ve made.

When my life coach asked how I felt about these tasks, I realised I felt a complete lack of satisfaction about them – even once I’d completed them.

Getting something off my ‘to do’ list had, in itself, become something I felt I had to do.

Enter: the ‘I want’ list.

My life coach’s alternative to a ‘to do list’ – which I paid her £40 an hour to suggest – was, lo and behold, another list.

The idea behind an ‘I want’ list is pretty self-explanatory. Whereas a ‘to do’ list revolves around the things we feel we need to get done, an ‘I want’ list focuses on the things we want to get done.

It’s a way of shifting our focus from the things we’re expected to do towards the things that really matter to us, therein leading to greater life satisfaction.

It was a simple (and expensive) lifestyle tweak I had nothing to lose by trying.

The first few days didn’t go well.

Just writing the words ‘I want’ felt unnatural, ‘un-British’ even. I tried to bat away my mum’s voice drumming into me as a child: “It’s more polite to say ‘I would like’, not ‘I want.’”

I kept writing what was effectively a ‘to do’ list, with the words ‘I want’ written before each obligation.

‘I want…to change my bed sheets’. ‘I want…to do a food shop’. ‘I want…to go to the gym’.

It felt ridiculous, and no more productive or satisfying than a regular ‘to do’ list. And there were always things left un-ticked at the end of each day.

Some suggest that focusing on the things we don’t want to do might be more efficient for productivity, while others believe that directing your attention towards the things you have already achieved could be more beneficial.

But I had made a commitment to focus on the things I wanted - and after a week I still hadn’t cracked it.

To make this work, I needed to go deeper: to the root of why things were on my list in the first place. I needed to focus less on the things themselves and more on the motivations behind them.

I wanted to go to the gym because I wanted to be healthy (and naturally, to have a rippling torso for my upcoming holiday). I wanted to do a food shop because I wanted to be more efficient with my money, and to stop the biscuit bingeing that had become a routine part of my afternoons.

It sounds corny, I know, but thinking of all my tasks in that way started to help; the tick rate of my list started to increase.

By focusing more on why I wanted to do everything, and working out the positive desire that was driving each task, they started to feel more appealing and less like obligation.

Let’s be real, there are some things you never want to do (does anyone enjoy going for an STI check?).

But re-framing my attitude towards these less-than-thrilling errands – for example, by realising that I wanted to enjoy my sex life free of worry - I really did feel more motivated to do them.

I’m now a few weeks in, and the ‘I want’ lists seem to have stood the (albeit short) test of time.

I start every morning focusing on what I want rather than what I have to do, and when I get into bed in the evening, I do so with a slightly smug sense of achievement, knowing that everything I did that day was just because I wanted to.

I’d say give it a go… but only if you want.