Whenever I feel overwhelmed by my classes, my job, and my (virtually non-existent) social life, I turn to a dear, old friend to help me through the day: my to-do list. Like any other relationship, my relationship with to-do lists has ebbed and flowed over the years. Once upon a time I could plan to finish all my homework in one night and fall asleep victorious. That’s not the case anymore. As I fall deeper into adulthood, I must continually reshape the way I think about work.
Last fall I enrolled in a course called “Doing the Work,” taught by Professor Mason. We read a book called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, and I kid you not, it changed my life. Allen considers “work” anything you want to do. He banishes the concept of a “work-life balance.” After I adopted his views on “getting things done,” I realized how stressful and unproductive I had been living my entire “adult” life.
Let me explain. Back in high school, I championed the “laundry list” of assignments, chores, and other miscellaneous obligations. I would write lists including items like “dog,” “AP English,” “trash,” “socks,” and “sister.” If I wrote the list in the morning, I would sometimes forget what I meant to do with the listed topics. What specifically did I need to do for my sister? Did I need to call her? Did I need to pick her up from a friend’s house? Or… maybe I just needed to show her some stupid video I found on the Internet. In any case, I did not give myself enough information to carry out an action without causing unnecessary stress.
In his book, Allen proposes a solution for vague, unspecified items. It’s simple: add information to the listed items, especially verbs. For instance, instead of writing “sister,” I should have written, “pick up sister from Sami’s house at 3 PM.” In the second example, I put less pressure on myself (and my brain!) to recall information on the spot. Instead, I am able to glance at my to-do list and know what I need to do without wasting any time or energy filling in the gaps.
Unfortunately, as much as David Allen’s method helped me, I soon discovered at the beginning of this year that a few descriptive verbs wouldn’t save me from stress. Thanks to the Kenyon Krud, I fell behind with my reading assignments. As more and more assignments piled onto my to-do list, I couldn’t look at my to-do list without feeling like a total failure. In fact, I haven’t updated my Google Doc containing my “official to-do” list for over a week.
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Over the summer, I downloaded a Google Chrome extension called Momentum. In addition to a randomized, high-quality background image, the extension allows users to keep a small to-do list in the bottom right-hand corner of every new tab. This small feature constantly reminds me of my objectives for the day, and the gray line that strikes through my completed actions motivates me to finish all the items on my list.
Until last week, my condensed to-do list acted as an extension to my Google Doc. Everything I typed into it reflected my academic commitments and nothing else. If I had four or five items on my list, I could only finish one or two (or maybe three on a good day). Last week I started to do something different, and that slight change has made all the difference. In short, I began to weigh self-care and academics equally. I began to take into account my mandatory obligations (i.e. class, club meetings, office hours, etc.)
For some, it may seem intuitive to take into consideration all of these things. For me, it wasn’t. I was too blinded by my academic stressors to realize that I had actually done a lot if I managed to attend all my classes, eat three meals in Peirce, and read 23 pages in a dense textbook. True, I still had at least a hundred pages of other books to read, but that did not mean I needed to devalue everything else I had done during the day. Now that I add things like “Attend Modern Democracies” and “5 PM: Eat dinner with friends” onto my to-do list, I feel more accomplished and less stressed than ever before.
Image credits: Charlotte Smithson