Issue #179: How to Not Get Eaten Alive by Little To-Dos

Confessions of a chronically busy perfectionist in recovery.

📺 “Prime Target” on AppleTV+: At this point, I’ll watch anything Leo Woodall is in. This entertaining-enough show features him as a math genius at Cambridge who stumbles upon a theory involving prime numbers with implications that could get him killed…

📚 I’ll Come to You by Rebecca Kauffman: Family secrets and disappointments converge in this new novel, set in the Midwest in the ‘90s. Ellen is recently divorced and disappointed with dating, her son Paul and his wife Corinne are struggling to get pregnant, and Corinne’s family have their own suite of issues. Compassionately told, with characters that will stick with you.

🎥 ‘Your Monster’ on HBO Max: A quirky riff on ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ if Belle were a theater actress battling cancer and the beast was the monster in her childhood closet… Okay, so not quite the same fairytale romance, but an unconventional love story (starring Melissa Barrera of ‘In the Heights’ and Tommy Dewey) that’s charming and full of behind-the-scenes Broadway moments.

Last fall, I had more “free time” than I’ve ever had in my life, and yet I found myself as busy as ever. Even in the calm after the book storm, and in the midst of a break from graduate school, my days were completely packed. Each day bled into the next, in a blur of errands: I returned a sweater, answered emails, went to the DMV, picked up dry cleaning, dropped my skis off to get tuned, got my oil changed, went to Costco, and on and on. I had promised my agent a book proposal by December, but struggled to find the time. I was consumed by little to-dos.

Most of us do this (chances are you’re reading this as a break on your way to “Inbox Zero”) because the completion of any given task offers a seductive promise on just the other side: Time for the things that actually matter to us. As soon as I got my life in order, I would finally work on my book in uninterrupted bliss, read the novels piling up on my coffee table, or even (hold onto your pants!) do nothing.

In the end, it was the speed with which that “free time” disappeared that allowed me to see the fallacy in my thinking. I had all the time in the world, and I still wasn’t getting any closer to that elusive end. In fact, each completed task seemed to plant the seeds of several more, like a weed spring-loaded with pods. I felt tormented by the endless responsibilities and began to envy those with “simpler” living situations (the fantasy of an off-the-grid tiny home has never felt so vivid). As I approached the reality of beginning my clinical internship, and the considerable time it would require, I realized that something needed to change. Read on for:

• The app I use to organize my to-dos, and why I limit my own access to my full list

• What my to-do list looked like yesterday

• The unexpected joy of an “Errand Day”

• How to make time for things that actually matter to you