I’m a list maniac. I have to-do lists for everything and I’ve tried and used every list and to-do app known to man. It always seemed like I had more things to get done than anyone I knew. I never felt like I had any free or downtime because I was always working away at the tasks on my lists.
When I’m emotionally overwhelmed I add tasks to my lists and obsessively think about, and frantically do all the things I need to get done. I start planning the order I’m going to do things in and how I can optimize the completion of all my tasks, while performing other tasks.
Eventually, it occurred to me that I was tying my value as a human being to my productivity, which I was measuring by tracking the items I completed on my lists. I realized that this was a horrible coping mechanism for finding value and worth in myself. I knew I had to find a way to break this vicious cycle, but it was nearly impossible for me to not think about all the stuff I had to get done. The lists are never ending. I recently found a pretty ridiculous way of interrupting this pattern and I wanted to share it.
When my mind started racing through my task lists, usually while I’m in the middle of another task, I began to take notice. Once I realized I was obsessing about tasks I would say out loud, “I don’t need to think about that right now” or “I don’t need to do that right now”. I added on to that by stating out loud, step-by-step what I was currently doing, for instance, “I’m washing the dishes. I’m putting soap on this dish. I’m scrubbing this dish.” The racing thoughts would shortly subside as I did this.
After some time I was able to do this in my head, which was a huge relief as I’m sure it looked and sounded ridiculous, but looking ridiculous never really bothers me. I’m proud to say that I’ve been task list-free for some time now and have been working on replacing some other bad coping habits with some new ones.
