Check it off

Shower: Check

Make pasta: Check

Take out trash: Check

Make list of ….:

This is what my last to-do list looks like. Instead of really important to-dos I just wrote down everything. But why?

It was a slow process. I have always been someone who liked to plan a lot and in detail. I think I wrote my first to-do list when I was 14.

From packing lists to private and professional projects, my to-do lists were always with me. In the beginning, I even almost always worked through them completely. But even that got lost in the last time.

Now I just write them down.

Recently, I noticed that I have been carrying over the tasks on the to-do list to the next day and the next and… for a week or more. Rarely do I do something from this list. Except for the standard things I wrote down and which I would have done anyway (hey, shower!). Just so I could check them off and not feel like a complete loser.

But subconsciously, they still stressed me out.

Not only was there the guilty conscience of not having done something — again — but all the time I was thinking about what I still had to do. After all, it was on the list. I never had the idea to take some items off the list or to think about why it was listed at all.

So I thought to myself, then I won’t write anymore if I don’t do anything about it anyway.

Well, if it had worked that easy.

First of all, there was the automatism to write a to-do list first thing in the morning, during the first coffee and with a youtube video or some music in the background.

This is similar to the urge or habit of using your phone even though you have your phone-free day. So I had to remind myself more or less every 5 mins that I don’t write to-do lists anymore (at the moment…)!

Every time I went through the house to get a coffee or something else, I saw things that I wanted (or needed) to do.

I thought to myself that I would “do it later” but the mood got worse every time and my head became fuller and fuller because: I couldn’t write them down. So I had to remember them. And then I noticed how little I remembered at all.

Nowadays we have everything on our mobile phones, in notebooks or laptops and we can always set a reminder so that we don’t forget anything.

So why should I remember anything?

My brain is no longer used to remember something and to keep it even for more than a moment.

Besides, I felt a bit like an addict in cold turkey. I got more and more restless as the day went on.

I had told a friend that I would live without to-do lists for now, and I tried to negotiate with her that I would only have one! list and that I would only do one to-do a day! Really just one!

She found it totally strange how I behaved, she doesn’t write any to-do lists at all. She does things when they need to be done and that’s it! So she only ever puts the most important things on a list and, by not wanting to memorize pages of to-do lists, she prioritizes them.

She also asked me why I was writing to-do lists at all at the moment? Currently, I wouldn’t have to (I recently lost my job, that’s a yay! and I am exempt from work with pay until the end of the year) and should use my free time for cool stuff and not always plan everything through.

But I like planning. But the stuff I wrote down just got more and more and also less important. I don’t have to write down that I have to shower or take out the garbage, I smell both pretty quickly and then I can do it.

Maybe I really want to spend my time planning instead of doing something. Because that is easier.

Also, I found that my hobbies and interests became to-dos and thus stress instead of fun for me.

The idea of to-do lists, that they help to prioritize tasks and give an overview of what needs to be done, was working for me for some years but not anymore.

So, what to do? Cold turkey? One todo less every day?

When I recently had my “digital detox”, I tried cold turkey with my internet time. It worked very well in principle but was not practical for everyday life.

So I’m going to try something different now:

1. write down only the three (or five, depends, right?) most important to-dos of the day
2. things I walk by and can do within 10min I do immediately
3. to keep an “eternal to-do list” on which I write down to-do’s that should or must be done not on this day but in the near future

But: not just write everything down, but sort it out and prioritize it before

I want to use the free time I currently have without having to be in a bad mood every day because I don’t do unimportant things (or things I do voluntarily and for fun), but accumulate a mountain of bad conscience. Trying to live more into the day. Chill!

I am curious how my plan (ha, again!) will work out!