Infernal to-do lists
Recently, a friend of mine told me, “You are being crushed by the weight of your to-do lists!”
Let’s see, my to-do list has about 50 items on it. My list of projects that I want to start is 185 items long (this is after a recent purge during which I cut my list in half). Then there’s the daily practice things like exercising, practicing german, writing, taking a few photos.
She may have a point.
My friend handed down her judgment on my to-do lists after listening to me whine to her for an hour about how I felt that I had not accomplished anything this year. I flourished my project list as evidence - so many great ideas and not a one started.
Like a good follower of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, I’ve diligently recorded everything that I’d like to done. The idea is to save all these ideas in a system that allows me to quickly and efficiently get things done. Because I get things done, I can trust the system, and because I trust the system, I feel less stress. That’s the idea anyway. The problem is that my creative mind thinks up 5-10 interesting projects each day, but, being merely human, I can only finish one a day at best. So they accumulate. Even with brutal triage sessions, the list grows. It becomes a mass of unfulfilled desire - demanding my attention, yet denying satisfaction. I’d put tremendous pressure on myself to get things done. I’d procrastinate like mad or when I would work, I’d be filled with resentment.
So, maybe she’s right. I’m going to give it a try - I’m banishing my to-do and project lists for the next few months to see how things go. This leaves me with only one question: “What do I want to do today?”
Curiously, I’m already much happier and much more motivated to get stuff done.
