"Having come to the conclusion that there was so much to do
that she didn't know where to start,
Mrs. Fowler decided not to start at all."
-- Rachel Crompton, Family Roundabout
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| To-do list 5-19-14 |
"I love lists. Always have.
When I was 14, I wrote down every dirty word I knew on file cards
and placed them in alphabetical order."
-- Adam Savage, "Step One: Make a List,"
Wired magazine (Oct. 2012)
and there's something wonderfully satisfying
about ticking tasks off."
--Shaida Kazie Ali
Yesterday was a productive day for me.
Because I made a list.
It wasn't a long list. Just three simple things. I wanted to mop the kitchen floor, plant my vegetable garden, and make a meatloaf for my guys' supper.
Even though it was a very short and unimpressive list, for me it was a lot to do in an afternoon without getting distracted by other brighter, shinier things.
I am not industrious by nature. I am more of a natural-born procrastinator. I do stuff, it's just usually stuff I feel like doing rather than stuff I should be doing. I can put off real responsibility for a long, long time.
But there's something about writing tasks down on a list that makes them more do-able, or urgent, or something. A list sort of stares me down sternly and over the top of it's glasses.
I imagine that if my to-do lists actually had faces, they'd look a lot like this:
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| Maggie Smith in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel |
And so crossing stuff off because I actually did it ... that feels really satisfying.
It feels like accomplishment.
So yesterday I made a list. It was a short list. A list with too many items is too daunting and makes me feel overwhelmed and then I'm likely to ignore the whole damn thing.
But three items? I can handle a list like that.
So after a long bike ride, a beer and a banana, I put the baseball game on the radio and got busy. And guess what? I did all three things.
Now my kitchen floor is all sparkly and shiny.
Yay!
Now my garden is full of neat, tidy, labeled rows of baby pepper plants and tomato plants, broccoli and cauliflower plants, zucchini and basil plants, with my zombie scarecrow standing sentinel over them all.
Yay!
And my guys had a delicious meatloaf for supper, which they'd requested, hence its presence on the list. (What is it about dudes and meatloaf?) Anyway.
Yay!
I'm no math whiz, but according to the list, I think that makes three good things in one day. Make that four, because I didn't get spanked by the stern lady. Which (depending on who you ask) is also a pretty good thing.
