The Never-Ending “to do” list

I know it’s not just me. I love making lists. Unfortunately, my lists tend to run away with me. There are just so many things to do and so little time to do it all. If you include the things that you actually want to do and the things that you should do in addition to the things that you absolutely HAVE to do, the list becomes unwieldy – both in practice and in sheer size!

It is not uncommon for me to decide that I’m going to do one of 3 things: pare the list down to things that I have to do and maybe 1 or 2 that I should, plan out a strategy for getting everything on the list done eventually by doing the “have to”s and then adding in a “should” every night until the list is done, add in all the things that I want to do with the rest of it. None of these strategies are ever successful. Why? Because that damn list isn’t static. Things get added to it.

So, I’ve tried keeping one week of things to do for that week (TWAL for “this week at life”) and a “master” list of all the bigger things or things without such a timeline. The master list then becomes the list that you lose because you never actually look at and it’s really just a list of the things you feel guilty for not doing for years on end. You know: putting away the baby clothes that fill the extra bedroom, remembering to call a lawyer to get wills set up, feeding the dog (okay, not that one).

My TWAL list generally looks something like this (shortened significantly):
- yoga (or whatever planned activity I have that I’ve committed to/paid for that week)
- meal plan
- basic cleaning
- some kind of food to freeze for the kid
- finish reading book club book (well, this week)

- a whole slew of things that I never did last week (and sometimes the week before and the week before and before Christmas)

Of course, life happens and you don’t get a chance to finish all of these things every week. Some weeks, you don’t get a chance to finish half of these things. Other nights, you let yourself free of all but one thing so you can actually spend an evening relaxing because your husband has hockey and you end up taking care of a “friend’s” fussy baby while she goes to the ER because she asked you instead of her family...but I digress.