Something amazing happened to me today. I realized that my latest “to-do list” was actually working.
I have to explain to you that I’ve created 1,402 such lists in my lifetime, since I’m as old as dirt and always seeking a way to become more productive.
I’ve bought special notebooks with fancy designs on the cover. I’ve downloaded apps that promise I’ll “get organized in a snap.” I’ve made special commitments to myself if I followed through with them.
But it was always the same. I’d start out with tremendous enthusiasm, like you do when you embark on any self-improvement campaign. And, then, within a couple of days, I’d forget all about it.
Two years later, I’d find the fancy expensive notebook stuck in one of my bookshelves, and wonder why I bought it. It couldn’t have been to start a daily journal, because that’s another task I promised myself I’d do, with zero results.
I did keep a daily diary when I was in my 20s, but when I later found it buried somewhere in some box and reread it, I was so mortified at my behavior that I threw it in the trash.
And some of you might remember my column about when I wrote my fictitious diary, that I kept when I was a teenager and wanted to practice being bad, but was too cowardly to actually be bad. So I wrote a daily diary as if I really was doing bad stuff, just to practice up in case I actually got the nerve. But the problem with that was my mother found my diary and read it — and of course thought it was real. So I was severely punished for my first writing exercise in creative fiction.
Anyway, that isn’t even what I came here to talk to you about.
Last week, I had some sort of brain seizure that caused me to realize I have a huge backlog of small tasks that need to be completed. And part of the reason that they don’t get done is because I only intermittently remember them.
These days, I have CRS disease, also known as “Can’t Remember (Stuff).” Some of you are familiar with this disorder.
Things I need to know enter my left ear, and, then when I tilt my head to the right, they slide out my right ear without ever attaching to anything inside my brain.
This makes it difficult to, say, remember to call the appliance repairman to fix the refrigerator that forgot how to make ice.
Or to get the antique lamp in the living room repaired, even though I walk past it 30 times a day and note each time that it doesn’t work.
Or to mail my brother’s birthday present before I have to use priority mail.
The problem is that I wait for memories of these tasks to rise organically up from my subconscious, but the only time they do is when I can’t do anything about it, like when I’m in the middle of a guided meditation, on the table getting an acupuncture treatment or driving on the freeway. By the time I get free, I have once again completely forgotten about them until the next time it’s impossible for me to do anything.
And, in the past, the No. 1 task I would forget was to keep my to-do list current. Or even look at it. Ever. It was the poor stepchild of my day.
So, for reasons I can’t explain, I decided recently to start a new daily list, and to keep it in the “Notes” section of my iPhone. I do use these notes regularly now for all sorts of things, from a list of places we’re going for Day of the Dead to the type of oil my car leaks to the songs I want played at my funeral.
That’s right, I stopped leaving all this stuff on the backs of envelopes around the house, and my house has thanked me.
When I began this list, I was shocked and more than a little disturbed to realize how many things I’d been putting off, from finding a new dentist to getting my passport renewed to opening the box for the outdoor projector I bought on sale months ago and actually trying to use it.
Since then, I’ve been checking off all the dumb phone calls that I finally made, and it’s been so much fun to delete them from the list. That’s keeping me going, the ultimate joy I feel when I get to cross off a task.
I even returned a phone call yesterday that had been sitting there in my voicemail, making me feel guilty for months.
Every task I clear empties out a tiny space in my brain, so those little gray cells can be used for other things. And, believe me, these days I need them. Have you tried this? How’s it going?
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