The List That Makes My Head Hurt

This morning when I woke, as I do every other day, I grabbed my phone and checked emails. Today’s #reverb10 prompt was there among all the junk, the P.R. pitches, and the things people want me to add to my already overflowing to-do list. I opened it. This is what I read:

December 11 – 11 Things. What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life? (Author: Sam Davidson)

And I’m not going to lie my mind immediately started spinning. Eleven?! They expect me to come up with eleven things that I do not need? Eleven is a lot. Things?! What kind of things? Material things, non-material things?

Smoke rolled from my ears. Yesterday was easy. As soon as I read the prompt I knew the answer. The short of it, the long of it; all of it. I knew it. Just. Like. That. Today, I had to think. Hard. Here’s what I came up with:

• Unproductive Distractions – I’m a distractible person. There, I said it. But I whole-heartedly believe there are both good and bad distractions. There are those distractions that inspire and motivate — an afternoon spent in a beautiful gallery, the way a train of leaves blows across your path in the fall — and then there are those distractions that waste time, resources, slow your work and stall your brain.

  Distractions, at their very core, speak to the soul, the heart, the inner nature of one’s being. Unfortunately, it is that nature who knows naught of the boundaries between good and bad. Distractions, to the heart, the soul, the inner being, are distractions; one and the same, all. It is the logical brain that can decipher between good and bad, productive and unproductive. I’ve never been lost in a moment because my logical brain was so captivated by something it saw it couldn’t be pulled back however. Which means, in order to cull unproductive distractions from my life, my brain and my soul have to be taught to work in harmony. A delicate balance between allowing my creative side, my heart to engage with the world around it and my logical side, my brain to decipher which engagements are worthy and which are not.

• Inefficient Spaces – Until about three weeks ago there was a massive, built-in desk in my home office. It took up one-third of the room, acted as a catch all for junk, and faced whomever was working at it into the back corner of the room — a room that is attached by french doors to our family room. It was perhaps the most inefficient space in the house and it was a space in which the most productivity was supposed to take place. So, one day, without prior meditation or a plan at all, I ripped it out. I love what has become of the space since. And have grand visions of what will become of it next. Since then I have set my sights on several other inefficient spaces in our home. In 2011, they will fall and life here will be both more efficient and more beautiful for it.

• Elaborate Methodologies & Shiny, New Tools and Toys – Just as I am distractible, I am unnaturally drawn to elaborate methodologies for organizing how to getting things done. The last six words of that sentence should be a red flag as to how absolutely asinine this attraction is. Organizing how to get things done? WHAT?! Chances are if you’re “organizing how to get things done” you’re not getting things done. Every new elaborate methodology is just another unproductive distraction that will get in the way of actually doing that; getting things done.

  Hot new planners? Aren’t going to do the dishes for you. Phone apps for tracking to-do lists, no matter how cool, cannot check off the things on that list if you don’t do them. Elaborate methodologies get in the way of productivity. Here’s a productivity methodology for you: work. It’s not rocket science, but if I can reason with myself — usually in completely unreasonable terms — as to why the next one might be different, then I simply must try it. Must. Despite my knowing, logically, it’s just another waste of time. I don’t need elaborate methodologies to get things done. In fact, getting rid of them may just get things done in and of itself.

  Which brings me to the shiny new tools and toys part of this. Just as I am unnaturally attracted to elaborate methodologies I am likewise unnaturally obsessed with tools and toys and gadgets for making the getting of things done easier. Except usually they don’t change a thing. They too must go.

• Unproductive Relationships – I’m not going to go into detail on this one here lest someone who reads it thinks I’m writing about them. For the record, I’m probably not. If there’s anything I’ve found over years of blogging it’s that the people who think you’re writing about them all the time are the ones you’re least likely to ever write about. Imagine that. But suffice to say, increasingly so, this year I have begun to feel a handful of the relationships I have put forth effort to maintain are largely unproductive; offering me nothing in return. So why am I wasting my time? There’s no good reason. I know that for sure.

• Inefficient Uses of Time – Speaking of time, have you ever really thought about how you use yours? I’m not talking about the big or obvious blocks of time. I’m talking about the little things. The five minutes here and the eight there. Because, as they say, the pennies minutes add up. They add up to hours and days and weeks and months and years and lives. That is what our lives are made up of, after all, minutes, dropped one by one into the bucket until it overflows. Mine may be large or it may be small, I won’t know until it’s full, but I would hate to have to look back when it is and see that most of what it contains was wasted.

• Quantity Time with my Loved Ones – Have you ever heard someone say they could have too much time with their family and friends? Me either, but sometimes I think that’s exactly the case with many people. The habits of the healthiest families I know — and the healthiest balance for our family I’ve ever found — does not include quantity time. Quantity time doesn’t strengthen our relationships, it doesn’t help us communicate, it doesn’t foster appreciation of one another. It does nothing except, perhaps, increase comfort with one another. And we have plenty of that already. What will being diligent about keeping quantity time with loved ones accomplish in my life for 2011? Well, in many respects we’re already there, so it won’t change much but a conscious effort to keep things this way will, I believe, lead to more productivity in all areas of life. Time not wasted on quantity can be used for productive pursuits in other areas and because time spent with loved ones will be quality, not quantity the relationships themselves will be more productive, too.

• Procrastination – If I were to let my type-A side take over this item would both be contained within and contain some of the others on the list. So many of those listed are just ways of procrastinating and others — the fear of failure, specifically — spurs procrastination as an avoidance tactic. But it deserves its own bullet point, I think. For no other reason than to draw attention to the fact that it is a common thread that links most of the other listed items.

• Fear of Failure – On this, I am a textbook case. If I do not wholly commit myself to something I cannot fail. This is how my internal reasoning mechanism works. So, because failure is not something I view positively I simply do not wholly commit myself to endeavors I deem to be uncertain. Unfortunately, I cannot deny how many opportunities doing so eliminates in life. I cannot deny that not wholly committing — regardless of the reason, as a matter of fact — is a death sentence for any venture one should undertake. I cannot deny that, in my case, then the fear of failure basically leads to just that: failure. Because my internal reasoning mechanism? Is clearly in need of recalibration.

• Guilt & Over-Commitment – Or perhaps more accurately; Over-Commitment and Guilt, as that’s the sequence in which they usually affect my life. If I don’t say yes, when someone asks for something — or I get a wild hair that says I should be doing something — I feel guilty, even if saying yes would mean I have to give up sleeping or using the restroom or eating or breathing oxygen. But then if I do say yes I feel guilty about the fact that I’ve had to give up sleeping to do something that may, if I’m brutally honest with myself, not be all that important.

  For me, over-commiting (or not over-commiting, even) and guilt go hand in hand. And of all of the items listed in this post they’re probably the two with which I’ve had the least amount of progress. I do well for a period and then, before I know it, I’m sleeping with one eye open and a pen in my hand because I can’t even manage to keep the list of things I need to be doing updated, let alone get the things on that list done.

Well, there it is. 11 things. And a tall order of things, indeed. It’s a list that scares me a bit. One that perhaps bears too much of myself to the world, but I won’t lie. I like it. I think, in January, I will want to look back at and expound on many of these things, look at how they affect me and how I’m handling them more in depth. And that’s the point of Reverb 10, isn’t it? Sending forth positive and productive reverberations for the New Year?

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This post is written as part of my participation in Reverb 10. Reverb 10 is an everyday writing practice during the month of December that, through daily prompts, aims to help you reflect on the year that has just passed and prepare for the year to come. Join us!

Tagged as: reverb10