Delist

yet, but definitely less list-dependent. I feel I’m managing my lists quite well these days; as a matter of fact, I don’t even have a current to-do list!! I have a few must-dos rattling around in my head, but I haven’t felt the need to put them to paper yet. However, if that urge does arise, I won’t fight it. Not only do I find some lists incredibly helpful in helping me prioritize, but I really LOVE lists – geek that I am – so long as I don’t let the list manage me :o)

At least for the moment, I have a handle on my lists. I went into my holidays with this embarrassingly loooong list of stuff to do, mostly small stuff. I felt I would use the list as a guide, so that when I felt like being productive, I would have at hand several ideas to choose from.

What I found however, was that by day two of my holidays, I was experiencing intermittent waves of anxiety about how much I HADN’T yet done! In short order I realized how sad it is that I can’t even be on holidays without some intrinsic demand to be more, do more. So I ignored the list. And I was productive at times anyway. So I continued to ignore the list, and STILL I managed to accomplish various projects around the house. On my final day of holidays, I decided to address the list once and for all.

I broke the entire list down and categorized all items into three parts – things that I MUST do, things that need doing when I have time, and things I would like to do someday but that are not at all necessary.

I then typed up the Must Do list to stick in my day planner, and I did the same with the things that need doing when I have time. They now consist of 12 and 7 items respectively. The longest list by far is the ‘someday’ list, which I can now record under “list my someday goals” on 43T (though for now I’ve just stuck it in my morning pages folder and will revisit it later).

I truly feel lighter. I feel more able to relax, but more importantly, I feel more able to focus on and do what needs doing without rushing through it because of all the other things I SHOULD be doing.

Perhaps until this becomes my ‘new normal’ I’ll need to do a weekly review of my Must Do list, to ensure that nothing non-critical has found its way onto that list.

and I’ll say it again – my biggest barrier to getting things done is my compulsion to list a gazillion things to do each day. So what happens? Understandably, after a full work day, I get home rather tired – too tire, in fact, to actually start doing all these chores I’ve set out in a looooong list for myself. So, in a somewhat petulant, overwhelmed, don’t-know-where-to-start-and-don’t-want-to-anyway kinda funk, I fall on the couch “for just a minute”. Very often I’ll watch t.v. through the evening, just to distract my attention from all that I “should” be doing. Well, that’s just silly – retreating to lame re-runs is not the ONLY diversion from those things that I should be doing. I have to stop punishing myself for not being constantly productive… fun CAN come first sometimes!!!
I’m really going to try to limit the lists to only those things that MUST be done today and/or what can realistically be done in a single hour – and leave the remainder of each evening to… whatever I feel like doing!!

Here’s a photo of the recipes I’m currently attempting to prune and organize – astounding, isn’t it?? It’s no wonder I’ve put it off so long & get overwhelmed every time I approach the pile!! Good news though – I think I found a new database for recipes that I can buy for cheap and use with ease. Before I do that though, I’m getting serious about going through this pile to pull out all the recipes I’m unlikely to make or unlikely to make again.

Ironic, I think, that I would add to my list on 43 Things that I want to de-list, that is, to stop living by my lists. I went cold turkey once, and lasted three weeks. It was incredibly liberating to actually DO things, rather than just PLAN things.
I’d like to do it again, and for good, but realistically, I think I need to wean rather than go cold turkey.

I’m going to post some of my lists here, so that I can periodically check in on them, but I’m going to stop carrying them around with me and re-writing them every week. Just adds a tremendous pressure and guilt to DO MORE, and frankly, it sucks all the creativity and spontaneity out of ‘free time’.

Most of what keeps my list-of-things-to-do so long are tasks that I can’t do in a day, and ideas for things to do ‘one day’... and things I can’t afford to do at the moment. None of them are so big that they warrant their own Thing, so I will lump a whole bunch under De-list, in the hope that I will one day have learned to live moment to moment, and trust things to happen when the time is right, and there is nothing left to list.