Episode 155: Make a Not to Do List

With that in mind and with this being the last podcast of the year, I wanted to have a topic that maybe you can think about as you head into the holidays and this busy time of the year. Now heading into the holiday season, many of you have your to-do list, and these lists may be long and there may be many different lists to keep everything organized and make sure that nothing is forgotten, and to-do lists can be really helpful. My mom was a big list maker. My mom was also a single mom, even though technically she didn’t get divorced until I was 23, I consider myself raised as a single mom because my dad was never home, and when he was home, we wished he wasn’t home. He was irritable, he was ornery, he was mean, and he didn’t really do much around the house or with the kids or to help the family be more productive. Now my mom was a schoolteacher. She was an elementary school teacher, and my mom was also a very organized person. She had lists for things that really didn’t need a list or weren’t really required. I remember going to her house sometimes as an adult and she’s living in her house all by herself, all of her kids are moved out, married, doing their own life kind of thing, and I’d go to my mom’s house and on the front of her fridge was a list of everything that was in her fridge and possible things she could make for dinner. I would kind of tease my mom and be like, “Mom, why do you have a list of what’s in your fridge? You know what you put in your fridge because you’re the only one putting things in your fridge and you can even open the fridge and look and see what’s in your fridge. You don’t need a list for that.” But my mom loved to make lists, and I would say that she may have been a little bit over-organized. Is that a thing? I think with my mom, it is a thing. She was a little bit too over-organized, but she loved having lists and she loved completing lists, and so I think for her, there was just some satisfaction that came in crossing things off lists. I know people like that who really get this sense of satisfaction when they cross something off their to-do list.

Now some of what this meant is that every day when I got home from school when I was growing up, there was a list written on a 3×5 card. Sometimes she would do just the plain white 3×5 cards, usually with lines on them, but occasionally… and actually, once they kind of were more of a common thing, they became a common thing in our house as well, where those colored, like the green and the pink and the blue and the yellow 3×5 cards, those were her kind of go-to for making lists. So every day when I got home from school, there was a list written on this colorful 3×5 card waiting for me, along with another five 3×5 cards with my siblings’ names on them waiting for them, and every day when I would come home, here’s this list, and we typically as kids got home earlier than our mom, who was a schoolteacher and would stay after school to get things done for the day and prepare for the next day, and so it was expected that these things on our list were completed before she got home. Now I understand the importance of doing a to-do list, and I understand especially for her as a single mom getting everything accomplished and getting everything done, she needed to be able to communicate with us and kind of remind us, like here’s what you need to do and don’t forget to do these things because… In our family, everybody had a job to do in order to keep the family going. So I can appreciate how helpful a list is in getting things done and remembering what needs to get done, and like I said, there can also be a great sense of relief or unburdening that people experience when they’re able to cross an item off their to-do list. Now I will acknowledge I also have a bit of angst when it comes to lists, and I’ve had to work through some issues and resentments that I have around lists in order to appreciate their helpfulness, and I have to continue working on these issues whenever they crop up. I’ve also been able to appreciate as I am a parent the importance of a to-do list for my kids. I’ve always been a working mom, so when my kids come home from school, things that I might remind them about in the morning they may forget when they come home from school or they at least conveniently say they forget, so I would leave them a to-do list as well.

Now one of the things I would do as a parent is usually I would leave a list and it started out with like, hey, I hope you had a good day. I can’t wait to hear about it. Text me and let me know that you’re home and remember here are these things to do. So I did kind of start off with like a greeting or like hey, I’m glad you had a great day, or sometimes like, get a snack, work on some homework, and then do these things. So it wasn’t just kind of this harsh startup to their getting home from school. Sometimes I felt that way when I got home from school myself, and there was just this list, I felt kind of burdened, like ugh, there’s even more to do and I’ve been at school all day and I don’t really want to do anything. I need to relax or I need a break myself.

So one of the things that I learned from working on my list issues is that in addition to having a to-do list, it’s also important to have an I-don’t list. Because to-do lists can be overwhelming for us. While there’s some benefit to it, we also know that to-do lists can also be overwhelming and that list can be long and it can be endless and it can feel like we’re never going to get to the end of it. So sometimes to-do lists can make us feel like we’re never enough and there’s always something more for us to do, something more that’s waiting for our attention, and it can be difficult to relax. It can be difficult to ever feel like we are done, and this is where the I-don’t list comes in to help us create balance and to help us live more quality-focused lives.

Now I first became aware of the power of a don’t list after the birth of my third child. Now I had two kids two years apart, so my first was born almost two years to the day later I had my second child, and I thought that was pretty good timing. I didn’t feel completely overwhelmed at the birth of my second child, but my second child was also probably by far my easiest child. She slept well, she was just kind of chill and just like I’m just here chilling, get to me when you can kind of thing. She was really a kind of relaxed, easygoing child. I always say that I planned to have a third child but not with the timing that my third child arrived. When my second child was about 7 months old, I found out that I was pregnant with my third child, and I kind of had to come to terms with some things because during my second pregnancy, I had some gallstones and they were creating some issues during my second pregnancy. My doctor had said after the birth of your second child, you’ll probably need to get your gallbladder removed or deal with the gallstones, but that was kind of after the birth of your second child. And you know, life is kind of busy so I had this second child and I was going to get to taking care of the gallbladder issues, and so when I started to not feel very good and it started to become a problem, in my mind, I was thinking this is gallbladder related. In fact, I remember my next-door neighbor at the time, she had come over to my house and she had been really sick, and I just was not feeling good, if you’ve had gallbladder issues you kind of know what that’s like, and just a lot of food didn’t really sit well with me. I wasn’t feeling good most of the time, and I remember my neighbor coming over. We were talking, and her first two children were about the age of my first two children. Her oldest was a little bit older than my oldest, and then her second was a little bit older, but they were close enough in age that they played really well together. So she came over to my house and we were talking, our kids were playing, and she mentioned to me that she was pregnant, and that’s why she had been sick and that’s why I hadn’t seen her as much and whatever. And I was like, oh, and I’m thinking to myself I’m glad that whatever issue I’m dealing with, I just have to go have surgery, get it out, done, fixed, over. The problem’s dealt with. And it turns out… I go in to have my gallbladder assessed and to have it looked at and to start working on this issue, and the doctor said, “Are you pregnant?” In your child-bearing years as a female, that’s always something that you’re asked, is there a possibility that you’re pregnant? I told him, “I don’t think I’m pregnant.” “Is there a possibility?” “Well, I’m sexually active, so I guess, but I don’t think that I’m pregnant.” So he called me back and said to me, “So you do have gallbladder issues and we do need to get it taken out; however, you’re also pregnant.” That came as a shock to me. I was like, “What? Are you sure?” He confirmed, “Yes, I’m positive. You’re pregnant.” And he asked me, “How far along do you think you are?” And I was like, “Clearly I have no idea. I thought this was all gallbladder-related, so I have no idea.” So I made an appointment with my OB, went in, she kind of asked the same thing, “How far along are you?” “I don’t know.” She asked, “Well when was your last menstrual cycle?” After a pregnancy, after you give birth, your menstrual cycle’s kind of messed up for a little while, so I was like, “I don’t even know. I have no idea what’s going on here right now.” So she was like, “Okay, well let’s do an ultrasound.” So she’s doing an ultrasound to determine how far along I am, and I was like 20 weeks. It was this moment of like, oh my gosh, I’m one of those people, one of those women who I missed my complete first trimester. I didn’t even know I was pregnant, and I’m in my second trimester, so it was kind of one of those shock moments for me. So my second and my third child were 15 months apart, and just a little side note, this neighbor that I’ve been talking about who had told me she was pregnant and that’s why she had been so sick, I actually ended up having my baby three days before she had hers. So it just kind of those, oh my gosh, here I am, I’m so glad mine just has to do with my gallbladder and I’m not pregnant, and I end up having a baby before she does. Anyway, then I did get my gallbladder taken out after my third pregnancy.

So back to I learned the power of a to-don’t list after the birth of my third child. I was clearly in over my head, and as much as my husband helped out with parenting and he sometimes was a parent when I was working, so he didn’t mind jumping in and taking care of the kids and making dinner and keeping the house clean. We really did have a partnership in that way, but we were both in over our head at the birth of this third child, and I often will say this third child kind of arrived on her own timeline. The other thing about this, she was due the end of September, she was actually due September 30, and she was born September 6^th, so clearly just this timeline that she completely determined herself, and that says a lot about our third child. She’s always been that way and just kind of marches to the beat of her own drum, and if she wants something to happen, she kind of makes things happen, which is admirable and at the same time really difficult when she’s a young child and so much of her making things happen fall onto me as a parent. So I was overwhelmed when she was born. She wasn’t a child that slept a lot. My first wasn’t a baby that slept a lot. My second was. My third, again, was not, and she had a lot of energy. She liked to wake up really early in the morning. She would fall asleep at night pretty early in the evening, but she was getting up in the morning like 4 am, and that was kind of her natural rhythm. To this day, she’s now 20 years old, that’s still her natural rhythm. She’s a very early riser. Not so much of a… she doesn’t stay up super late, but she’s up early in the morning, and so I remember just there was no way I was gonna get everything done. Oh by the way, did I mention, during that time period, so just prior to finding out I was pregnant with her, my husband and I had decided that we… he had this dream, he wanted to open a restaurant, so we had also opened a restaurant, and then I think that restaurant opened maybe two months before I found out I was pregnant, so we’re opening the restaurant, I’m not feeling very good, then I find out I’m pregnant, and my husband had also been called, or he had gotten this position in our church that they had asked him to take that was pretty time-consuming. So a lot of things happened at that point in our life that really made time difficult and just kind of pushed me into this situation of like there’s no way I can do everything that I think I need to do or that I would like to do. There’s just no way it’s gonna happen because life has brough this amount of chaos and these demands on our time and on our energy that is going to make me have to pick and choose.

And so I was seeing a therapist at that time, and I was able to… that therapist gave me permission to have a to-don’t list. Okay, so you’re not going to be able to do everything that you would like or that you think you need to do. Why don’t you just give yourself permission and choose? What are you not going to do? So one of the things… I’ve never really been somebody who loves laundry, but one of the things during that time period is… I would wash our clothes and I would get our clothes dried so we had clean clothes, but folding them and putting them away, I just didn’t do that. So we literally would live out of laundry baskets, and I bought more and more laundry baskets so everybody had… so they were still sorted in what they washed and how I washed them and in what batches I washed them, so they’d come out of the dryer, they’d go in that laundry basket, and we just lived out of laundry baskets, and that was just one of the things, that was an extra thing, yeah, I would have liked to be able to keep up on, but there was no way I was going to be able to keep up on that. So I had a don’t list. I don’t put away and fold laundry. I just don’t do that. And I remember my third child was about 11 months old, and I was like, I might be able to do that again. I might be able to put laundry away, but then when I kind of looked at that and assessed what if I put that on my to-do list, what would have to go off of my to-do list, or how would that work time-management wise? And the reality was, it wasn’t going to work. And so it stayed on the to-don’t list for a little bit longer. And eventually I had to incorporate and get my kids’ help doing the laundry and having them put them away and having them help me to fold the laundry, which again, wasn’t going to be folded and put away to my standard, but it was good enough. And so I think when we start to become overwhelmed or when our to-do list just seems impossible or maybe I can try to do everything on my to-do list, but there’s gonna be a price to pay. Maybe I’m more irritable, maybe I’m not getting enough sleep, maybe I start to build resentments. I think we have to recognize that saying no or having a don’t list brings intentionality to what we fill our life with and what does get our time and our attention and what we give ourselves permission to not have to do. It brings awareness to what we say yes to and what we say no to.

Things on the don’t list may include things that pull us down. Maybe we find something that we’re continually procrastinating and we start to say, maybe there’s a reason I’m procrastinating that and it needs to be moved to my don’t list. Maybe things on our don’t lists offer minimal reward or they keep us trapped or keep us committed to something that we actually aren’t that committed to. Now there has been research that shows having a don’t list actually increases our productivity. It lessens decisions we have to make, and it can increase relationship quality and our own emotional stability. So think of these two lists as the to-do list equals the things I want or I need to embrace in my life, and my don’t list as the things I need to let go of.

Now let’s talk for a minute about this whole notion of letting go because a lot of people are completely frightened by this idea of letting go. I think I’ve briefly mentioned on the podcast before that several years ago I was invited to this professionals’ weekend at a residential treatment center. Now one of the activities that we did during this weekend was ziplining, and that was no problem. I actually hadn’t been ziplining before and it was a really great experience. I pushed myself, I faced my fear, I went forward with courage. Great. Perfect. That was a great thing to do in that weekend. But following this activity, they took our group up to this old wall, and at one point in history this wall had served as a dam. It was about 75 feet high, and they strapped us in with all this safety gear and they sent us climbing up the wall. Now I’m not really a fan of heights, and that’s not something that I’m super comfortable with, but this was a weekend to facing my fears and doing new things and pushing myself, and so up I went. And when I got to the top, there’s this small ledge. Now not even the depth of my foot could fit on this ledge, so maybe like kind of the toes to the balls of my feet would fit on the edge, and I kind of had to shimmy along the edge out to one of the staff who was out there on the ledge, and he would walk us through this visual, help us connect with and talk to our fear or whatever emotions we were experiencing, and then we were kind of to turn around, which again, I’m on this ledge that my whole foot doesn’t even fit onto and I’ve gotta turn myself around so that I’m facing outward. I’m facing the trees, I’m facing this view down below. Again, I’m 75 feet up in the air, and I’m supposed to jump. I’m strapped in and whatever so it will eventually catch me and kind of bungee jump and I’ll come back up, and this staff member had talked about us that for a lot of people in this situation when you’re bungee jumping, you’ll grab onto your harness, and he explains the harness is going to do nothing for you. It’s harnessed you to the bungee but actually grabbing ahold of that is more of a panic or a… it’s an illusion of some safety, it’s an illusion of some control if I’m grabbing onto something, so his challenge was like starfish—arms out, legs out, jump. So I was able to do that and not grab onto my harness, but instead just kind of jump off the wall, and that’s some psychological talking to get your body to jump off of a wall and just starfish out and then let that catch you and kind of pull you back up.

Now this kind of letting go that I’m talking about requires that conscious, intentional choice. Now the kind that I just talked about, jumping off of this wall, this bungee jumping, was more of a physical action in a rush, and it can be scary, but it also can be extremely exhilarating. But the type that we’re talking about with this to-don’t list and letting go of things that I put on my to-don’t list and just saying I’m giving myself permission to not have to do these things, or I’m saying to myself, I don’t do this. That’s more of a conscious, intentional choice, not just the physical action. And this conscious, intentional choice can also be painful. Oddly enough, painful feelings can be comfortable, especially if they’re all you know, and so some people will have trouble letting go of their pain or other unpleasant emotions about their past because we think that those feelings are part of our identity, and in some ways, we may not know who we are without that pain. So letting go in intentional ways is about change, and change is often uncertain. We have an idea of why we want to change or what we’re changing to, but the steps in getting there and how that will feel to live at this different place, it’s uncertain. It’s not something that we’ve done before, and so it involves a choice to stop ruminating on the things that we have no control over. Oftentimes when we’re uncomfortable, we kind of will go through some mental gymnastics to kind of give us a sense of control. Often it’s an illusion of control. But really to come face-to-face with the idea that I have no control over this and I really need to let go of it, I need to give it up, I can’t ruminate, I can’t hold onto it in any form, can lead us to focusing more on what we do have control over. Now sometimes there’s a hesitation or a resistance to focusing on actually what I do have control over because that means that I need to take some action. If I have control over gossiping or I have control over my complaining, then when I see that, I should do something about that, and I can do something about that because that’s all something I can control. It may feel more comfortable than to focus back on things that I don’t have control over, like the people I’m gossiping or complaining about, and if I can focus on what I don’t have control over, I can avoid taking action and making changes on what I actually do have control over. So when we start to focus on what we actually have control over, this is where the rubber meets the road and we start to see if we’re up to the task and if we have what it takes and if we’re really committed to doing these things. Sometimes ruminating is easier, but letting go and putting these things on our don’t list creates space for something new. It requires us to focus on the present and accept what is right now. Letting go kind of clears the barriers, and these barriers may keep us comfortable, they might allow us to stay small or hidden, they may create a sense of safety even though living small and being hidden isn’t necessarily safe.

So I think it’s important to put together a to-do list. Now I typically have a to-do list. I also have my I-don’t list, and I think as you go through this holiday season and the end of the year and all that comes with it, it’s important to have your I-don’t list, whether it’s through the end of the year, whether it’s an I-don’t list in 2020. And it starts to shape what the future and what the present is going to look like based on this I-don’t list. As a person, I don’t do… fill in the blank. Again, when I make lists, I usually keep them anywhere 10 items or less because we don’t have that much time. All of us our busy in our life so we have to have a list that’s doable, something that we can keep in our mind that’s on our radar, and so when I start to act outside of my list or do things that are on my don’t list, my brain can remember that because it’s not so long that I can’t keep track of it.

So here’s the things that I have on my list. Sometimes there are some things that are on my list that have been there for quite some time, and there’s other things on my list that maybe will change. Maybe I have things on my list that have been there that were new maybe several years ago, and technically they’re still on my don’t list; however, I’ve kind of mastered some of those things. I just don’t do those things anymore, so they’re not necessarily on my don’t list in terms of what my focus is and what I need to do now because those are things that I’m pretty comfortable not doing. My I-don’t list, and again there are some things that are pretty consistent because I always need to kind of keep track of that. So number one on my don’t list is don’t lose the forest for the trees. Sometimes I can get bogged down in everything that’s going on and I lose sight of the big picture, and whenever I lose sight of the big picture, I kind of lose sight of where I’m headed, so sometimes I’m in the trees and I’m walking in the forest and I don’t have that big picture look, I’m just looking kind of around, and I think both are important, but I don’t want to lose big picture just for the moment.

Number two on my don’t list is don’t go along to get along. Now both of these, number one and number two, are pretty consistently on my don’t list because they remind me of what’s important. They kind of remind me how to prioritize things. And I also learned in my family growing up, I learned how to go along to get along. That’s one of the ways that I survived, but that’s not really living life, and that’s not really being intentional and actually making choices.

Number three: I don’t answer calls that I don’t recognize or if I’m unprepared for them. Now I typically will listen to the voicemail and I’ll get back to and respond to every call, but if I don’t know the call, if it’s not somebody who really is in my inner circle of people, I don’t usually answer my phone. I’ll let it go to voicemail. I don’t let it interrupt whatever I’m doing. This also helps because I’m a therapist, so often my phone is on silent and I can’t see it because I need to be present in the session with the person that I’m meeting with, but I also have to give myself permission for that, and sometimes people may be annoyed by that, and I’m okay with that. That’s  something I’ve given myself permission is to circle back and get back to the people, but I don’t just… just because somebody calls me doesn’t mean I have to answer that call.

Number four is I don’t immediately say yes or no. I have given myself time to think, but that’s something that again stays on my list of it’s okay, and I give myself permission that I don’t do those things. I’m usually going to think about it because I make better choices when I can think about it. I don’t overthink, so that’s also on my list is to don’t overthink things. So I kind of have to find that balance between giving myself permission to not immediately say yes or no and to not overthink things.

Number five is I don’t shrink back from speaking up. Now again, that’s kind of one of my default settings. I feel like growing up in my family, I bit my tongue a lot, and I feel like I do still, I mean if people know me personally or if they kind of interact with me, some people will say I speak up a lot, and I feel like there are still a lot of times I’ll shrink back from speaking up or I have to kind of remind myself if I’m sitting somewhere or something’s being said that I take issue with or that I feel like is unfair either to me or to somebody else, normally I would go along to get along and just not say anything, but I remember that this is on my list of what I don’t do, and so that kind of pushes me and gives me the courage to speak up and to say something.

Number six, and I learned this also from personal experience and sometimes I have to remind myself this, is I don’t ever, ever, ever– on my list it’s three evers. I don’t ever, ever, ever beg somebody to be my friend. And again, I will say I think I mentioned this in a podcast too, I kind of had this friendship that blew up. I got kicked out of the friendship, and I did. It was a really low point for me, and I begged them to be my friend. I begged them to not end the friendship, and I learned the hard way that that’s never a good place to be, and I can’t ever let myself be there. If somebody doesn’t want to be in a relationship with me, I will accept their answer and I will accept their choice because if they don’t want to be in a relationship with me, I shouldn’t be in a relationship with them.

Number seven is don’t wait for the perfect time. I could put a lot of things off. I could procrastinate waiting for that perfect time, and so I’ve had to get to this place of it’s a good enough time or it’s a fine time to do this. I can’t wait for the perfect time because I won’t get done what I want to get done.

Number eight is don’t neglect close relationships.

Number nine is don’t “what if.” I can play that “what if” game probably better than most people. I’m really good at the “what if” game. Again, often if scares me or it keeps me… it holds me back. It keeps me from actually doing what I want to do. It keeps me from taking a chance or risking something, and so I don’t “what if”.

Number ten is that I don’t live with regret. So that helps me to also determine what I do do is because I don’t want to regret things, but I also, if I decide not to do something, then I can accept that and I don’t regret, I don’t second-guess. When I’ve made a decision, I accept that that was my decision. Could it have been something else? Sure, but I accept my decision and so I don’t regret it. I don’t kind of rehash it or second-guess it or replay it. It is what it is.

Now some things that you may put on your to-do list, like with some of my clients, one of the things that we’ve talked about putting on their to-don’t list is you don’t text your ex. Sometimes the holidays may be difficult and you get sentimental or you’re missing somebody or you’re missing something and it seems like a good idea, but if that’s something on your to-don’t list, then we don’t second-guess our to-don’t list, so don’t text my ex, and that keeps me kind of I’ve thought it out once, I don’t have to re-think it every single day or every single hour or whatever that looks like. I’ve made the decision, it’s on my to-don’t list, I don’t do it. There was a time for me, I was younger, but there was a time for me that on my to-don’t list was to not bite my fingernails. It was kind of this anxiety bad habit that I had picked up, and it took some time for me to really work on it and to kind of get a different habit in place, so you’re to-don’t list can also be very specific to something you’re working on right now. One I would add again from some personal experience the other day is don’t talk on speakerphone in public. I didn’t do that. Somebody else did that. I was like, ugh, you should really put that on your to-don’t list because that’s super annoying when you’re having a phone conversation and you’re in public and everybody else can hear this conversation. It’s not fair to the other person. It’s not fair to the people who are having to listen to that.

Now a couple of things for this—there is an app if you have an iPhone. Through the iPhone, there’s an app that’s called To-Do List, and you can put it in daily and then the next day it will say here’s what you did, or here’s what you didn’t do actually, and you’re doing really good. It will give you encouragement and what needs to happen today. What’s on your don’t list today? So if may be things… I think sometimes it needs to be very specific and very detailed. Other times it can be kind of vague, like my list right now is a little bit vague, it’s kind of my guide into 2020, these are things I’m working on that I want to keep close to the chest that I’m focused on.

And just one more thing that I wanted to end with, it’s a quote that with this time of year or maybe more in the fall because now we’re heading into winter where I am, but it’s a quote by Wendell Berry. He says, “When I rise up, let me rise up joyful like a bird, and when I fall, let me fall without regret like a leaf.” I think when we think of the fall, whether you live in a place that has seasons or not, you can kind of picture or you’ve seen images or pictures of fall, where this leaf has lived well, it has lived throughout its seasons and now it’s time to let go and to fall. I think this idea of the to-do list and the to-don’t list kind of help us do those things. What can I rise up joyful like a bird? That’s my to-do list. And what do I let fall without regret like the leaf? And that’s my to-don’t list.

So some things to think about as you’re heading into a busy, crazy season and with a new year in terms of how you want that new year to look and what guides and things can you put in a list in order to help you have a good year on the things that at least you can control.

At the end of this episode, I want to thank those of you who listen. I want to thank those of you who share this podcast. I know it’s been shared, and I really appreciate that. If you have any ideas of topics or things that you would like in the upcoming year, please feel free to reach out to me and let me know what those ideas are. I love to do episodes that are listener ideas or listener requests, so that’s always a helpful thing if you have an idea or you want me to cover something, please let me know. I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday season and you enter the new year with some excitement and some joy looking forward.

At the end of this episode, I want to remind you that your story matters. Remember there’s something meaningful in every chapter. Don’t wait to share your story ‘til it’s finished. Until next time, Jackie.