Is it time to challenge our to-do lists?
OMIKUJI-PAPER FORTUNES AT A JAPANESE SHINTO SHRINE, 2023
"Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans."
Allen Saunders (1957),
popularized by John Lennon in "Beautiful Boy" (1980)
Being Challenged By our To-Do Lists
The final weeks of every year seem to bring a unique intensity, regardless of cultural or religious observances. It’s akin to a collective push to wrap up projects, meet year-end goals, and prepare for the coming year. Amidst this frenzy, it appears that our to-do lists grow exponentially, leaving us wondering how we'll manage it all.
This race to an imaginary finish line mirrors the daily grind many of us face in life, or specifically at work. It reminds me of my time in the corporate world, where the ever-prevailing agenda of “getting stuff done” was a constant companion.
We often ended the day pointing out to each other that we had not really started our “real work”. We often felt trapped in a loop of endless emails, constantly changing and expanding schedules, and lists, resembling to emptying an ocean with a tea spoon.
The Upsides and Downsides of those Lists
Admittedly, to-do lists have their place as useful tools. But when they become our taskmasters, ruling our lives with an iron fist, it's time to take a step back.
Perhaps we can navigate our lists best by not taking them too seriously, seeing them as guidelines rather than unshakable instructions?
There are several upsides of to-do lists:
Providing structure and organization: Establishing a clear framework for tasks.
Improving time management: Facilitating priorization of tasks, and allocation of time and energy.
Encouraging routine: Promoting the development of productive habits.
Giving a sense of accomplishment: Boosting motivation through task completion.
Reducing stress: Lowering anxiety by not having to keep everything in mind.
There are considerable downsides of to-do-lists:
Building up pressure: Creating overwhelm when tasks pile up.
Creating a false sense of productivity: Completing trivial tasks can give the illusion of progress while feeding quick-fix dopamine dependency.
Limiting flexibility: Rigid adherence can stifle creativity and adaptability, suppressing innovative thinking and intuition.
Becoming a form of procrastination: Distracting from completing profound tasks by diverting energy to busyness with little impact.
Creating a never-ending cycle: Continuously adding items without completion as in being “stuck on the planing grid”.
The Zen of Undoing To-Do Lists
As the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki once said:
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."
Perhaps it's time we approach our to-do lists with a beginner's mind, seeing possibilities with open-minded flexibility, rather than obligations.
What if we treated our to-do lists not as rigid commandments, but as gentle suggestions? What if, instead of frantically ticking off tasks, we embrace each moment as relevant, even the mundane ones?
Listening in on the moment, instead of mindlessly following a list on autopilot can lead to desired answers we didn't know were available right there. This happened to me on a recent early morning, when I gladly tangled myself up in an unplanned coffee conversation with a stranger - coming out of it with solutions for all my pending Christmas menu questions. It was a good reminder to realize that pending questions often don´t get answered by rigid planing :
By staying open-minded and attentive to our surroundings, we often find unexpected answers we didn´t know were there.
Ultimately, life isn't about getting things done; it's about the experiences we have along the way. Often it´s most efficient to take a few deep conscious breaths, challenge our lists, and embrace pending tasks with a sense of flexibility for change.
As the philosopher Alan Watts wisely noted:
"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance."
On a broader scale, in the age of social media, to-do-lists take on a rather bewildering dimension at times. The Instagram account @insta_repeat highlights this phenomenon by creating collages of nearly identical photos from different users, making me wonder what happened to being in the adventure instead of on a bucket-list trail.
It can be freeing to take a step back from our lists in general, reminding ourselves that we are here to write the story on the go, as that is where we can live it. Accepting that we will never be able to do and see everything.
It’s often the things we didn’t know we needed, and the conversations we didn’t plan for, that unexpectedly touch us and expand our horizon.
Dropping as much of our to-do list as possible is about deciding to be more curious about what life will look like rather than mentally deciding in advance. This approach allows us to be more open to unexpected opportunities and authentic exploration. As the influential music producer Rick Rubin writes in “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”:
“If we get out of the way and let the art do its work, it may yield the sincerity we seek. And sincerity may look nothing like we expected.”
This principle applies as much to art as to how we approach our daily lives and tasks. By letting go of preconceived notions of what we “should” be doing, we open ourselves up to relating more directly to what we are engaged with. Indeed, this might look quite different from what we imagined, bringing about an originality we can't mentally plan in advance.
It's frequently surprising to me that what I thought was so important to get done often ends up not being needed at all. It resonates how Oliver Burkeman writes in “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals”:
“To approach your days in this fashion means, instead of clearing the decks, declining to clear the decks, focusing instead on what's truly of greatest consequence while tolerating the discomfort of knowing that, as you do so, the decks will be filling up further, with emails and errands and other to-dos, many of which you may never get round to at all.”
Talking with elderly people in hospital waiting rooms due to the health issues of my parents, l’ve lately been surprisingly spurred on to say no to many things to be able to say yes to what feels intuitively most urgent to live. The elders bluntly stating, that often, when we finally feel we have cleared the slate by getting through our to-do lists, we tragically are often no longer capable of doing what is closest to our heart.
Reevaluating to-do lists is ultimately about creating space for life in the moment while having energy for what counts most for us, which is often surprisingly little.
As we navigate the complexities of life, we might notice that the most fulfilling experiences often arise spontaneously. The most memorable encounters and impactful places are often unplanned. Perhaps the most efficient move is to occasionally detour from our to-do lists and embrace the urgent, unexpected opportunities life presents. In doing so, we might find ourselves truly living, rather than just planning to live.
Have you asked yourself:
Do you feel overwhelmed by an endless to-do list every day?
What truly needs to be done versus what feels urgent?
Are you living according to a bucket list without catching up?
Could your lists be keeping you from writing your own story?