Rest When You Must

I saw an advertisement today, glossy and well-produced, about focus and getting things done. The man looked quite successful and showed his color-coded calendar, making the case that you should NEVER use a to-do list. Just calendar everything. His guest was also a young, well-dressed man, mid-to-early thirties.

I wonder how much of that is a “thing”, where the marketing guy asks, “What makes you different? What makes your approach to time management unique?” And the time management guru says, “I recommend that people get rid of the to-do list and use ONLY a calendar!”

Marketing guy rolls eyes and says, “Okay.”

Here’s why I think that approach, organizing everything in a pretty Google calendar, is not right for everyone.

I spent a good part of the day sleeping on the couch. That was not my intention, nor am I lazy. It’s just that, post-cancer, I have good days, which means I have some semblance of energy, and bad days, which means I spend most of the day sleeping on the couch. Calendaring for me is useless. I have to work when I can, and rest when I must.

So, there are the listers, and the schedulers. I’m a bit of both. I love to have shit on my calendar with set-aside time, but that’s just not always practical. For instance, it’s time for new tires on the Jeep. The oil change and tires are on my calendar as a place-holder, but I’ve postponed it to next week because A) it’s not urgent because we are in a drought right now and there is no snow in the forecast, and B) I have a bunch of other stuff to do that IS urgent AND important and why on earth should I worry about tires right now? It’s on my damned TODO list – I just moved it to next week. I might move it again. And then I might make an appointment and put it on the CALENDAR.

And writing, like this, is super important. I’m working on two books and marketing a novel and a screenplay. Some of that I could calendar, like following up with an agent. But it doesn’t actually rise to that level, and if I had everything on my to-do list on my calendar, even color-coded, it would be a mess. That guy in the video had a nice, tidy calendar with five things on it. Sheesh, dude. I have to actually WORK. Even sick today I graded assignments, wrote this blog post, worked on my book, and spent two hours prepping for and meeting with a group of people organizing a business pitch competition for next fall. Now we’re going to go feed the neighbor’s dog and play scrabble. All that since 2pm.

Also, how flexible is that calendar idea? I get it that calendaring could work for some people. When we were raising five kids and their friends, we had a lot of shit on the calendar. We lived and breathed by that thing. Even so, we were in the grocery store one day when our youngest asked, “When does gymnastics start?”

Um, ten minutes ago?

So, I rely more heavily on my to-do list now because I can slide things around and make last-minute decisions about what will and will not get done today. Also, I like checking things off. Every morning after I write three pages in my journal, I organize my to-do list and go over my finances. At the top of the list are my mid-range (one year) goals so I am constantly reminded of what is important, and then I print out today’s tasks and they stay with me all day until I am done or run out of day. I’ve also learned over time about how much I can get done realistically during a good day. And on a list, I can include little things like my mid-day meds and following-up on a phone call or a fraudulent credit card charge or some other weird thing that maybe takes four minutes or ten.

Today, I slept most of the day, so most of my tasks are slipping over to tomorrow. That’s fine. I’ll get done what I can and go to bed knowing I did my best, and the calendar tomorrow looks pretty clear, so I can get a bunch done if I feel okay.

So, calendar what you can, keep a to-do list, and clean out your inbox weekly. That’s how to get stuff done.

Oh, one last thing. Just let me check off “write blog post” (was on my list to post today) and add “post blog post” to tomorrow.

Done.

p.s. I’m going to include my to-do list template in a subsequent post, so stayed tuned for that.