I’m open about my sudden fondness for to-do lists, but it wasn’t always the case.
Like as a kid, I loved the concept of to-do lists.
And, as with most things, I took it too far. I’d put everything in my planner: take a shower. Get out of bed. Everything short of wiping my ass was itemized.
And it became crippling, and a job within itself just to maintain those lists. I’d fall short of expectations, add things I already did just to cross them off, and eventually abandoned the whole thing altogether for years.
The day my dad passed, the first thing I did was break out a new yellow pad and just start putting down everything. It was one of the few things that kept me tethered to sanity in those first hours. I made notes of which calls to make, funeral planning, meetings, people to notify – and it just added a calming sense of structure to the unrelenting chaos.
Workwise I was still reluctant to make these lists until a month ago when I read an article about Sheryl Sandberg’s success. As Facebook’s COO, she was doing what I was doing at the time, on an obviously much larger scale, and she said her secret was making, quite literally, to-do-lists of to-do-lists. I mean, if she can run a billion dollar company and oversee every department and project with regarded execution, why can’t I do the same?
So I started documenting everything for the end of September I needed to do. Rent. Car repairs. Phone calls. Bills. I noticed I was more successful the smaller and more specific the task was, large projects needed their own lists (like there’s literally an entire one for cars).
I also discovered a huge to-do-list flaw: planning out things at times. The secret is to put things in order that you can do them, but not attach specific hours and minutes unless you want a full fledged panic attack in the Marshalls clearance aisle because you’re 15 minutes late for your own unreasonable expectations.
It’s a guideline to help keep me focused. And I also make space for days where I do just a few things on the list as well as days where I do large chunks, and alternating them.
It’s working for now. And I’m happy.
