Today we completed our big bad mother of all to-do lists. 365 to-do items for an entire year have now been analyzed, categorized and colour coded. Not an easy task let me tell you. What we assumed would take an evening of drinks, in actuality took three weeks of continuous brainstorming and revisions.

With John away in Europe for most of the month, our list was built using Google Docs (an excellent web tool for collaboration). John would start by adding a chunk of ideas to our document in progress. Then I’d go in, add my own ideas, and flag any of his that didn’t appeal to me or that I’d already done. Then John would do the same, flagging and adding new ideas. And so on. And so on. Back and forth. Back and forth.

We argued about a few of them. Like do I really want to eat a bug? Like really? This led to an informative conversation about the surprisingly high protein content in bugs, how most countries in the world eat them happily, and how trying new things is always better than being an ignoramus. At the end of it all I agreed. Bring on the bugs.

In conclusion: We highly recommend this exercise to anyone. Making a list of 365 things to do is a task in itself and there are discoveries to be made in the process (insights about yourself, your values, your goals).

For us, what we discovered was this:

Most of the reasons for not doing the things we want to do have little to do with the usual suspects (i.e. lack of time or money) but rather, choice. The choice to NOT do them. Strange logic, I know. But really, think about all the things that you want to do in your life that you could do pretty easily but don’t, simply because you choose not to do them.

Why not just do them?

That’s our motto for this year.

So…

here we go.

Day 1 of this crazy project begins

……now.