The Tyranny of To Do Lists
I’ve always had them: stick it notes, scraps of paper, diaries, jotters, notebooks and now a notes app. ‘To do’ lists are my modus operandi, what keeps me organised and on track. Stick it on my list, then tick, tick, tick. Oh, how I love to tick off the different tasks. It makes me feel productive and accomplished, when the rest of my world may be out of control - very often IS out of control.
I don’t know where I got the habit. My Mum often had a shopping list - indecipherable and often lost in her ‘safe’ places.She seemed to manage perfectly well without ‘To do’ lists. Her life was regimented by work and household chores and any spare time she had, she enjoyed the garden and family time.
I blame the 80’s and the advent of the Filofax*. How I loved mine. I could fill it full of useful/useless information: my diary, shopping lists, to do lists - of course - and lots of other interesting (to me) stuff. I only got rid of my map of the London Underground and London map from my original Filofax, last year, when we move house! That’s how much I loved this organisational marvel. I’ve just googled Filofax and am delighted to see they still exist. It’s very tempting. My husband would have apoplexy. He’s an electro boy to the core and loathes bits of paper. We have a shared diary on line, which, I must admit, does save a lot of conflict (of our events, not our relationship). The Filofax was a status symbol for me. It represented adulthood. I’d moved on from foolish, locked, 5 year diaries and had arrived in the world of work and responsibility.
My current ‘to do’ list is ridiculous. It has urgent things on, which I need to keep in the forefront of my mind and get done this week; it has household things I should do as well as tasks I want to do. Writing my novel appears week on week throughout the entire 52 weeks of the year but never has any priority attached to it.
Who’s heard of the Franklin Planner? This was like Filofax on Steroids. I even did the course which encourages you to implement a priority system for things you need to do. First produced in 1984, it claimed to enable you to organise your life and achieve your goals. I should have got my money back. My novel appeared in my first Franklin Planner in 1990 and despite many failed attempts has never become a completed work. I did get there, finally, in 2020, but the manuscript was subsequently lost. That’s another story, which I won’t bore you with now.
The problem with any list type organisational system, is that in reality, it is ‘just a list’. It doesn’t make you more organised, efficient or better than anyone else. Habits are what make things happen. The habit of exercise or writing, or anything else. Wearing a groove, using a muscle; practicing, perfecting, producing.
A list can be helpful as an aid memoir, but it can all too often become a niggling to get things done, even when we’re already doing something else. The list of ‘to do’s’ can gnaw away at your subconscious so that you loose spontaneity. If it’s not on ‘The List’ I shouldn’t be doing it. How can I do something else with all these tasks still to complete? There’s this never ending anxiety about all the ‘stuff’ I have to do, all that remains undone. It can actually make me more anxious, seeing everything in black white, all those things still to be achieved. It can feel a lot like failure and It can steal my peace. I’m not saying that having lists is a bad thing per se, or that any of the things shouldn’t be done, but sometimes it’s better to enjoy a walk on the beach or a chat with friends or a meal with family, rather than rushing on to the next thing on my list. Many things are not time critical. Does it matter if I leave the laundry another few hours or - horror of horrors - another day? Does it matter, in the grand scheme of things, if dinner is 10 minutes later because I chatted to my neighbour? No, of course not, yet the ‘tyranny of my ‘to do’ can persuade me otherwise.
Making time for my art and my novel might nourish me creatively and delivering on an order is necessary for my business life and professionalism. The household chores and some of the other random ‘stuff’ are not imperative. We all need to get stuff done, but it should not tyrannise us. Many things on my list could easily be left undone without causing any noticeable difference, save perhaps freeing up my mind and my time a little. I shouldn’t be feeling such pressure. When I start to feel that self-imposed needling to do something on my list, I’m trying to assess whether it is something that is a good use of my time. Time is finite. Do I really want to spend it dusting, when I could be writing, on the beach or spending time with family and friends? Definitely not! Dusting has to be done, like a lot of boring household chores, but it isn’t imperative NOW (unless I haven’t dusted in a while, but we won’t go there).
There is always the danger of putting things off, if you’re a perpetual procrastinator, like me (hence my ‘to do list’) The goal is to make a reasoned decision rather than simply doing something because I feel compelled to by a list. That’s the tyranny of ‘to do’. I want to learn to let go of some stuff so I can actually get the good stuff done. Is that lowering my standards, setting my sights below par? Sometimes it’s conformity to what I think my life should look like, rather than how I want it to be. Doing less can be more, where important things like relationships are concerned. Ignoring my list, from time to time, can be raising my game to include spontaneity, doing something I’ve not considered (lists can be proscriptive) and creating time for what’s really important, rather than simply expedient. I probably won’t won’t regret leaving certain tasks aside, but I might regret missing time with loved ones or taking an opportunity because I was adhering rigidly to my task list. I know it sounds ridiculous, but trust me, the tyranny of the ‘To Do’ is real. Sometimes my compulsion to get things done has meant I’ve roped my husband in to do things when he felt no such compulsion. He’s a bit more laid back than I am with ‘to do’s’ (though he does like a list too) and better at chilling. He’s almost at the other end of the scale, so it probably balances out, but I know sometimes we would have been better just enjoying time together rather than doing stuff.
Having recently moved house, into a turn of the last century property, there is masses to do on both the building and the garden - which have both been neglected for decades. The ‘To Do’, as you might imagine, is very long. The fact is, the list of ‘to do’s’ for maintaining a property is probably endless (like painting the Forth bridge used to be) and we need to prioritise important tasks along with balancing time for ourselves and for family and friends . At the end of the day - and the end of life - connections are more important than tasks and the tyrant needs standing up to sometimes.
*For those of you not as ancient as me, a Filofax is a loose leaf notebook for recording appointments, contacts and notes, often within a vinyl or leather binding.