Proven Ways to Cut Your To-Do List - Even If You’ve Tried Everything

This is the transcript of The Refreshing Leadership Podcast episode: Proven Ways to Cut Your To-Do List - Even If You've Tried Everything, published on 18th May 2026.

Welcome to the Refreshing Leadership Podcast with me, Maya Gudka. We talk about decluttering on this podcast, but I also say that there's no point having a beautifully organised desk but a completely chaotic, reactive work schedule that feels busy but isn't actually moving you forward.

Your time is your most valuable resource. So in this episode, we're going to focus on ways to declutter your work to-do list, especially if you work inside an organisation.

This can be really, really tricky. There's a lot of time management literature out there, but it doesn't really speak to life inside organisations. What I offer here are things that have actually worked for my clients - the stuff that makes it through the stress test of real people inside organisations doing great things.

Strategic time versus firefighting time

The first definition I want to start with is strategic time versus firefighting time.

A lot of the people I work with are incredibly reliable. If something is asked of them, they will deliver. If there is a meeting, they show up. If there's a deadline, they meet it. Their outward accountability is very high. In the language of Gretchen Rubin, who talks about the Four Tendencies, they are Obligers.

What that often means, though, is that their inward accountability - the time they set aside for their own thinking, planning, and more strategic work - gets compromised. They might sit down to do something important, something that actually moves things forward, but something else is required urgently. And they drop that strategic work to deal with it. It's easier, it's nice to feel needed, and it's a default. We can all just spend our day being reactive.

I used to say when I was a programme director inside London Business School: I could have spent all day happily tapping away at my computer. Everybody would have loved me because I would have got back to everyone on time. A lot of people were always needing and chasing me for things. But if I had done that, I would have felt satisfied in the moment and had good feedback from people - but I would never have done the stuff I really needed to do. The stuff I was being paid to do, which was directing a portfolio of programmes and designing programmes.

What I think is important here is that the business-as-usual work will get done eventually. The question is not whether it gets done - it's when, and with what level of energy.

I never want you to use your best cognitive energy, your freshest thinking, for the business-as-usual stuff. That is such a waste. It's like having your best cup of coffee and then wasting it on mundane tasks. It's like doing an amazing warm-up in the gym and then never going to lift the actual weights.

We want to use that best cognitive energy for the stuff that is less defined, more complex, and has a longer-term payoff. All the things our monkey brain struggles with. Our monkey brain likes things that are immediate, that have a quick reward. It likes reactive, operational work. We want to move that to later in the day.

This is the Eat the Frog idea, applied in a way that works for organisations.

What actually belongs on your to-do list

So let's apply this to your to-do list and what belongs on it in the first place. There are a couple of lenses here.

The first is: what do you want to be known for? What is your strength, your niche - this is what I'm really good at, people know I'm the go-to person on this. When you get clear on that, it can be quite a relief. You realise that you don't need to be excellent at everything, and work can become a lot more enjoyable because there's a natural synergy between what you love, what you're known for, what you spend your time doing, and your strengths.

Instead of being a generalist who is reliable across everything, you start to become known for specific areas and thought leadership - and hopefully this can align with what you care about as well.

I had a client in the entertainment industry who cared deeply about increasing opportunities for other Black women in her field. She had reached a really great position and became involved in board-level discussions around this. She had access to high-profile conversations with senior stakeholders and clarity on what mattered to her.

When her boss returned from maternity leave, there was a natural reshuffle of who was attending what. She was happy to let some things go because she already had her space. She knew where she added value, and she didn't want an insane calendar. She was able to make decisions about where she wanted to fight to stay at the table.

That is the clarity you get once you know what you want to be known for.

If you don't already have a thing you are known for, go and ask some colleagues. What would they associate with you? What would you be the go-to person for?

This is one of those things that I've had a lot of people go through in the Vision Builder and feed back to me: only when you get outside feedback do you fully appreciate it. Many of us are naturally quite modest. We are less likely to recognise all the things we are seen as the expert on. We are much better off hearing it from those around us.

Letting go of perfection

There is a complementary piece that goes with this, and that is letting go of perfection.

Tim Ferriss calls this library fines - racking up library fines. Do you want to be the person who never, ever accumulates a library fine but never gets to their important work? Or are you willing to let a few library fines rack up - and a few non-critical things get a little bit less perfectly managed - because you are focused on what really matters?

I'm smiling as I say this because I have just seen some late notices in my inbox. I am very much in the library fine category. And at a certain level, I will allow myself to be chased on certain things if it means I can redirect my energy to the things that are going to make the real difference.

This is not about being sloppy. It's selective and it's intentional.

If you are typically someone who comes back immediately on WhatsApp - and if you haven't replied for three hours you apologise for the delay - that can be adapted. Allow yourself a 24-hour or longer reply window. That is not you being late. You have very much planned when you are going to get back to certain things. It's about being more intentional and less reactive.

I hear this from clients who may have ADHD. When they are stressed and busy, they start to lose track of what's important. The minute they get an email from someone, they reply immediately because it's suddenly back at the top of their list. That's fine when it's something important. But we don't want to spend our entire days just responding to the loudest voices, the top of the pile - because then we are not going to be able to do the needle-moving stuff.

Promotable versus unpromotable work

The second lens is promotable versus unpromotable work.

There is a huge amount of work involved in any job that is necessary but will not move the needle in your career. It won't get you promoted. It won't meaningfully change your career trajectory. But it still needs to be done. So it's not about whether you do this or not - it's about the order in which you do things and how much of your time and energy each area gets.

I often encourage my clients to think ahead to their next appraisal. When you sit down with your boss in six to twelve months, what is going to make that an outstanding conversation? What specific outcomes, contributions, or projects would clearly position you for progression?

If you can have that conversation explicitly with your line manager - ask them directly what would make this a standout year - not only will that give you clarity, but when additional work comes in, you will have a reference point. Instead of automatically saying yes, you can say: let me look at how this fits alongside the priorities we've already agreed and come back to you.

That pause is powerful. It allows you to move from being a reactive yes-person - which organisations love and reward - to being more resource-aware. Because you are not an infinite resource. And nor is your team.

In many organisations, things are not perfectly filtered at the top. Work gets passed down. Unless you apply that filter yourself, at some point you become the person absorbing everything.

I have a special name for this, because so many of my amazing clients realise they are this person: they are the shock absorber inside the organisation. Highly capable, highly reliable, and therefore given more and more responsibility. They also protect their teams because they don't want them to be overloaded. But of course there's going to be a limit. There's only so much you can squeeze that stress ball before it becomes unsustainable.

The sooner you start having more intentional conversations about time - and are seen as someone who can have those conversations - the sooner you can start to take back some of that control and strategic clarity about what you're focusing on. Those conversations will feel slightly uncomfortable at first, but they are worth it.

Putting it all together

What I'm saying in this episode comes down to a couple of lenses.

It is not about ignoring team goals or stepping back from the day job. But when you are choosing the order in which to do things, think about what you want to be known for, and think about what the promotable tasks are. Make sure those things - which are often a little vaguer, a little harder, with no one tapping you on the shoulder for them at the end of the week - get done first. Early in the week, early in the day.

Those are your big rocks in the glass jar. You can fill up with as many little pebbles as you want afterwards. And as a high achiever, you will get that other stuff done. It's just that the other way round doesn't work - because that's how our energy works. We are not going to have the same cognitive clarity on a Friday that we would have had on a Monday or Tuesday morning.

I hope this has been helpful. If you manage to look at your to-do list and not necessarily cross things off but put some brackets around them or move them further down, I would be delighted to hear about it. And if you do manage to cross some stuff off, you have to let me know - drop me a message on LinkedIn or send me an email at info@mayagudka.com.

I do a whole pillar on this, because my clients acknowledge how much low-hanging fruit there is in their calendars and to-do lists that is going to enable them to be so much more effective. There is an entire coaching curriculum around this - a set of videos that goes through it step by step. If that is of interest to you, or you know someone it would be of interest to, there will be a link to the information about that pillar in the show notes. Like all of my pillars, there is curriculum and then one-to-one time with me.

I look forward to connecting with you next time. Bye-bye.

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About Maya

Maya Gudka is an executive coach specialising in C-suite career progression and leadership development. She works with senior leaders in major organisations on strategic career planning, executive presence, and building sustainable influence. Maya hosts The Refreshing Leadership Podcast, which ranks in the top 2% of podcasts globally and has nearly 300 episodes exploring the challenges faced by ambitious professionals.