[2020-12-08] From the to-do list to the to-day list
I received a video call from Santa Claus today. It was unexpected and delightful, and very timely, as my husband and I were compiling a Christmas playlist on Spotify (Bouchington Christmas).
"Santa" was a former colleague who found himself all dressed up with no place to go. And so I was the beneficiary of his largesse (pun totally intended).
As we chatted about our lives over the past several months, he asked whether my husband and I were still in the honeymoon stage. I said yes.
As I've mentioned before, Chris and I had planned to get married before I retired, as it simplified pension issues. Getting a marriage licence had been on my to-do list for months. However, two days after learning that I had ovarian cancer, obtaining said marriage licence moved from my to-do list to my to-day list. That was the Friday before the long weekend in August. By the Tuesday after the long weekend, Chris and I were married. It was a soggy ceremony on our back deck, but we didn't let a crappy weather forecast deter us.
My conversation with Santa got me thinking about other things that we put on our to-do lists, but never manage to get to.
David Allen, author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, says that we experience stress when we think about the many projects and commitments we have without knowing the "next action" that would allow us to move a project forward. For example, the next action when Chris and I decided to get married was obtaining a marriage licence. While I had been looking on the Internet for how to do this, the best course was calling city hall and speaking to someone who explained every step in the process. Within hours of making that call, Chris and I were able to pick up our licence.
Allen suggests this simple three-step exercise:
1. Write down the project that is most on your mind at this moment. What is it about this project that most bothers you or interests you?
2. Describe, in a single written sentence, what a successful outcome for this would be. What would allow you to check this project off as done?
3. Write down the next physical action required to move the project forward. If you had nothing else to do in your life but get closure on this project, what would you do right now?
Is there something that's been languishing on your to-do list? Sending a letter or card to a loved one? Finishing a homemade gift? Going for a blood test?
Perhaps it's time to move one thing from your to-do list to your to-day list.
