Your best friend and worst enemy
Time is the mother ship from which two competing forces—prioritization and procrastination—descend to create order or wreak chaos on your life.
These mental houseguests rear their heads around every corner, especially in the top three problem areas revealed by my survey: Work (i.e., email/correspondence/project management), Finances (i.e., time as it relates to saving $), and Health (i.e., scheduling fitness and/or relaxation so you can win at life without also losing your mind).
Each is integral to taming your to-do list—a thing many people need serious help doing. Even I need help doing that sometimes. Which is why when I feel myself starting to slip into Fuck Overload™, I get my shit together and prioritize.
Best Friends 4-EVA
Prioritization is BFFs with strategy. You want to get in on that action, because when it comes to a to-do list, writing one down is only half the battle. Next, you have to whittle it down, according to what you need to do first and what can be pushed off until later.
I use a running to-do list as a catchall for everything I know I have to do in the near future—basically whenever I realize I have to do something, I write that shit down. I’m always adding to my list (“update credit card auto-pay” or “order penis-stemmed martini glasses for bachelorette party”). Once I put a task in writing, I feel better equipped to enjoy my three nightly glasses of wine without worrying that I’ll forget what I needed to do this week.
Then, each morning after regretting that third glass of wine, I consider the amount of time I actually have in which to complete each task (credit card payment is due tomorrow, bachelorette party is in three weeks). This tells me which ones take priority, so I can reorder my list from most to least urgent.
Finally, I look at my prioritized items and determine what truly, madly, deeply has to get done TODAY, and I move those things to a fresh piece of paper. This is the process by which you turn your to-do list into a must-do list. (I see you rolling your eyes, but who’s the anti-guru here? It wouldn’t kill you to take notes.)
Today, my running to-do list looks like this:
• Touch up my roots
• Do laundry
• Write 500 words
• Watch the Red Sox game
• Pick up prescription
• Order birthday gift for husband
The prioritized version of the list looks like this:
• Pick up prescription (I need to start taking it ASAP)
• Write 500 words (daily word count necessary to keep deadline achievable)
• Touch up my roots (eh, I can go another day without)
• Do laundry (I need those pants two days from now)
• Order gift for husband (whose birthday is in 2 weeks)
• Watch the Red Sox game (there are 72 games left in the season)
And my must-do list looks like this:
• Pick up prescription
• Write 500 words
When I pare my list down to the truly necessary tasks, those are the only two things I really need to get done today. The rest of it is not “must-do.” (My savings plan is already so ingrained in me that I do it without putting it on the list, but I’ve been at this longer than you have.)
Now my day looks much more approachable. I feel less panicky about getting everything done, because there are not that many things. I know exactly where I have to start, and to top it all off, I realize I now have more time than I thought I did (back when I was in the throes of Fuck Overload™) to tackle a few other, less urgent things.
I can do laundry while I’m writing. I can skip the gift-ordering because I’m not sure what I want to get him yet anyway and I have a couple of weeks to sort it out. And if I get my work and my laundry done before 7:00 PM, I can settle in for the David Ortiz farewell tour with a clear conscience and a bottle of Pinot Noir. I sure do love me some Big Papi.
Tomorrow, “touch up my roots” migrates onto the must-do list but “pick up prescription” and “do laundry” have fallen off. Everything is still manageable. That’s the magic of prioritization. Like playing the kazoo, it’s really not that hard, it makes you feel good, and anyone can do it.
Sleeping with the enemy
Here’s where things get tricky, because your other mental houseguest—procrastination—is a fickle mistress. Procrastination can aid you in both postponing action and in doing less urgent or more pleasurable things in place of doing the truly urgent and/or unpleasant. Either way, giving in to it can send you into Fuck Overload™ faster than Alec Baldwin gets thrown off a plane for being an asshole.
You might get there if you postponed action all over the goddamn place—if you mistakenly viewed ALL the items on your to-do list as “must-do,” knew you couldn’t possibly get them done, and became paralyzed by inaction. At this point, you called in sick. You RSVP’d regrets. You hid under the bed until the bad man went away.
(More real talk, my little chipmunks: Anyone who says the biggest reason they can’t get anything done is because they have “too many things” on their to-do list, probably has too many things on said list because they keep postponing doing any of them, and the list just gets longer and longer.)
You also might get to Fuck Overload™ because you did all of the low-priority things and none of the high-priority ones. This self-deception will not serve you well over time. Like, if I spent all day out shopping for my husband’s birthday gift but didn’t do any writing, I might have tricked myself into thinking I got some shit done, but tomorrow morning I’d have double the word count to achieve and I’d be back under the bed like that girl from Taken. Uncool.
Or maybe you did a bunch of things that weren’t even on the list! That’s a real bait and switch right there. Clever chipmunk.
Actually, let’s look at that one a little more closely. Humor me.
If you’ve ever been on a diet, you may be familiar with the idea of keeping a “food journal” of everything you put in your mouth, which is an age-old way to create awareness around your eating habits. It helps you realize how much snacking you do without thinking, how many times you reach for seconds, and how long you’ve been deluding yourself that there’s only one serving in a fifteen-ounce “Party Bag” of cheddar cheese and pretzel Combos.
So how about instead of a food journal, you start a Procrastination Journal, where you list all the things you find yourself doing this week to procrastinate the shit you really have to get done? I’ll give you some space below, but if you need more room, by all means, staple a few extra sheets right in here. The longer your list, the more emphatically this whole point gets made, which is good for my brand.
Things I did that weren’t on my to-do list to procrastinate doing things that were: a journal
| ______________ | ______________ | ______________ |
| ______________ | ______________ | ______________ |
| ______________ | ______________ | ______________ |
| ______________ | ______________ | ______________ |
| ______________ | ______________ | ______________ |
In case you’re wondering, I’m not immune to this behavior myself; I just hide it well. In the spirit of solidarity, I give you:
Ten things I’ve done that weren’t on my to-do list to procrastinate doing things that were
1. Cut my cuticles
2. Researched various skin conditions I might have
3. Watched Ocean’s Eleven for the fiftieth time
4. Engaged in fruitless political debate on Facebook
5. Folded someone else’s laundry
6. Conducted a Tabasco vs. Crystal hot sauce blind taste test
7. Color-coded my ChapStick collection
8. Tried (and failed) to memorize the lyrics to “Nuthin But a ‘G’ Thang”
9. Practiced my James Carville impression
10. Kegels
So now you’re thinking Fine, and ew, I didn’t need to know about the Kegels, but for the love of God HOW do I stop procrastinating??? That’s why I bought this book!
I hear you. It’s a huge problem. Doing nothing at all, or doing only the low-priority shit, doesn’t help you in the long run. Until now, you haven’t been able to get procrastination off your mental pull-out couch, and it’s used up all your mental laundry detergent.
Well, I’m not going to tell you how to banish procrastination.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
Hey, hey, no need to get testy. In fact, I’m about to give you exactly what you bought this book for! Your friendly neighborhood anti-guru has some WACKY IDEAS.
You know that old saying “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer”? Well, that’s exactly how to deal with procrastination. If it’s going to stick around rent-free, you have to make it work FOR you, not against you. You can use it to postpone actions that are low-priority in order to turn your overwhelming to-do list into a manageable must-do list. Responsible procrastination, FTW.
Pitting your mental houseguests against each other helps you recognize nonurgent tasks (prioritize), set them aside (procrastinate), AND focus on what you really must do (win at life). Maybe having roommates isn’t so bad after all.