A List a Day...

I’m a list person. I make grocery lists, to-do lists, goal lists, and the list goes on, of course. I even have my five year old and eight year old creating lists when they need to clean their rooms or when they want to do several things in one day.


Recently, I’ve struggled with my lists because well, they are all work. Definitely nothing fun about house work, school work, and work in general. Once there used to be this exhilarating thrill when I completed the list, but as the lists grew, that satisfaction dissipated as I realized there wasn’t much time for anything but the tasks on the list.

So I experimented and attempted to forget the lists. For two weeks, I didn’t make a daily to-do list, not to mention the big one for special projects for the week. The result was I forgot my grade book at school when progress report grades were due. I forgot a test. I showed up for a parent conference on the wrong day. I basically made a mess of things. Not because I was lazy, but because I just couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do. My lists may not have been fun, but they substituted for my short term memory.

I had to rethink this problem. I suppose stopping lists cold turkey wasn’t the solution for me. Enter my idea to actually put the fun things on the list. Gone would be the problem of never doing anything fun, and I wouldn’t have to feel that nagging guilt because I was doing something fun before my list was all crossed out.

So I added throwing the Frisbee with my son and Wii night to my list, not to mention a game of Life where I finally won. I had the satisfaction of crossing things out on my list and having fun all at the same time.

Who knows? Maybe I may make out a list of only fun things. That’s an idea. I’ll get started right now.