I will (hopefully soon) be sharing a "tips and tricks" post about living with chronic illness, in which I've written that making lists helps me keep track of my brain. It goes a bit deeper than that.
I started making lists when I was pretty young, maybe in middle school. My mother modeled the practice well. She always has several lists going, even sometimes a list of other lists, so that she didn’t forget to check any. I remember fondly chuckling as a kid when she’d run around the house frantically shouting “I can’t find my list!” I now know that panic all too well.
Having inherited said brain fog, I started noticing in middle school and high school that I couldn’t keep track of things -- tasks I needed to do, objects I needed to pack, ideas I wanted to remember -- and turned to this practice as a way to keep it all in order. Most of my lists are of this nature.
I have noticed in recent years, though, that other practices have crept into my listmaking. You know when you forget something and everyone says “well, if it was truly important, it’ll come back.” Well, I have forgotten crucially important things. I have forgotten sentences halfway out of my mouth and been unable to find myself, only to remember 5 days later the important thing my friend needed to know days ago. I keep pads around in each room so that on a really foggy day I don’t need to experience the fear that the important item in my head will disappear before I find something to write it down on. I keep a pad next to my bed so that if I remember something as I’m drifting off I don’t trigger my sympathetic nervous system trying to capture it, thus throwing myself into insomnia.
Not only will I not remember to do something unless it’s written down, it also helps me to be more efficient. Given any chance, my brain will wander and I’ll find myself worlds away and an hour closer to bedtime. These space outs are not productive, and neither are they even healing! I get much more out of an intentional activity like meditating, taking a nap, or painting. Having a rigorous and detailed list makes it so that as soon as I finish an activity, I check it off the list and immediately start the next. There’s less opportunity to sit wondering what I’m supposed to be doing and end up on facebook or staring out the window...
As my energy has waned (or rather I’ve finally accepted that pushing as hard as everyone else will only make me crash), I’ve also used lists to help pace myself. I’ll draft a list of all the things I’d do today in an ideal world. I then create an order that will make sense for my needs, assign times to every item, insert time for meals and other necessary self-care, and usually end up with a ridiculously unrealistic schedule. I can then take that opportunity to take out the less-crucial tasks and put them in an “extras” list on the side -- in case I have time/energy, but not to feel stressed about if I don’t accomplish. This practice has become more and more important in the last few years.
The self-care bit is so important. I will run myself into the ground if I don’t take time to rest, meditate, and paint. And I will not likely take that time unless it’s explicitly scheduled in. There’s another purpose for penciling in self-care time, though. It’s so easy to look back abstractly at a day and say “but did I even do anything? I’ve been stuck on the couch all day! What am I even doing with my life? I’m so pathetic. Everyone else works full time and still has energy left to clean the house and socialize…” etc etc. I’ve spent many evenings bemoaning what I couldn’t do. It’s been much easier to take the other attitude, now that I’m writing down every tiny task that I need to do each day. At the end of the day, I look back at my lists and internally celebrate what I’ve accomplished. This morning I actually accomplished something before I got the chance to write my daily list, but chose to write that task down anyway, so that I wouldn’t forget to celebrate it later.
The best part about this is that it has helped me to value each item on the list, and that means the self-care too. I’ve always been someone who needed lots of rest time, but didn’t see it being valued by the people, institutions, and culture around me. So I stopped valuing it as well. If all I did one day was take care of myself, I saw it as a failed day. Now, if I have a really sick day, I schedule in time to nap, shower, meditate, do some solo creative activity, maybe connect with my partner or a family member, nap some more, make soup, eat soup, read a book, maybe email my doctor an update… already I’ve accomplished 10 things on my list! This way of looking at lists has been transformative for me. Instead of seeing myself as a waste of space who didn’t accomplish a single thing, I see someone who’s working incredibly hard to heal and find peace. I end up with more appreciation and gratitude for myself, as well as a brighter outlook on how my time is valued.
If you’ve read all the way through this post, I encourage you to take a minute and think about how you pace your days. Do you spend a lot of unnecessary time scrolling through facebook? Do you feel like you never have enough time? Five minutes of scheduling in the morning might save you hours over the course of a day. Are you someone who accidentally double-books or loses track of time or has to reschedule with friends (like about half of people I know)? Making lists might actually make you a better friend. Need to slow down and create more opportunities for self-care? Try scheduling it in.
But most importantly, if you feel haunted by this very American feeling that you’re not productive enough, try making lists. And don’t just make them -- celebrate them at the end of each day. Show gratitude to yourself for everything you are able to do each day or week. It feels amazing :-)