Schedules, to-do lists, planners — I love them all. Anything to do with organizing grabs my attention. One of my earliest childhood memories was of filling sheets of lined paper with the numbers I was learning to draw. My simple system allowed one number per row, written over and over across the page. An older kid looked over my shoulder and informed me I had my twos backwards. I argued passionately against this judgment. I still don’t like my paradigm to shift.
Arranging my life in perfect order required a lot of organizing, a task that occupied many pleasant hours. The complexities of a writer’s life pressed in. I tried so hard to tame this bohemian lifestyle. My lists had lists.
Life became a quest to reduce, produce, and streamline. Each time I developed a new system, it would fail to bring the results I desired — to put my life on auto-pilot. Thank goodness.
In an email, Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income raised an intriguing and terrifying concept: abandon a schedule in favor of to-do lists for my projects. A friend drove this idea home. Simply put, she assigns a category (personal, writing, health, etc.) for each day and consults to-do lists she keeps in Evernote. Her planner pages record what she accomplished. Google calendar notifies her of important appointments or deadlines. She never suffers the frustration of not completing tasks she assigned herself.
My friend’s methods resonated with me, but I was reluctant to make a change. The realization that she was accomplishing more than I, or most people, do finally convinced me. I adopted her system, tweaked to suit my needs. I should state that I haven’t thrown out certain routines. For reoccurring tasks like dressing or checking the mail, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every day. Also, I’m aware of deadlines and flag myself for apppointments, so I haven’t gone completely bohemian.
What I have done is make every day an adventure. I’ve become more accessible, interruptible, and flexible. When the winds that blow through a writer’s life come my way, I can bend. Letting go of the need to line life into neat little rows freed me to live it spontaneously, wildly, joyfully.
