Business and personal (planning) don't mix

Where I let go of to-do lists and action items

“It’s like you have this box full of lists!” Diane, my life coach.

The minute hand on my little brass desk clock whirled on its axis as I ticked through my action plan during our first scheduled coaching session. My resume was item one. In eleven months, I planned to cross off the last item—quit my job.  

“I’m a planner,” I said, forgetting what she’d told me on our introductory call—

“Let go of your need for clarity,” she’d said.

After decades in business, planning was ingrained deep in my psyche. I created advertising strategies, marketing campaigns, and branding guidelines, to name but a few. I based each list on an ambitious goal and measurable objectives. Planning went beyond clarity—it meant certainty, accountability—and even safety.

I brought this skill to my personal life.

Before leaving my second husband, I created a spreadsheet—an inventory of our wedding gifts and broken vows, what I would need to start over, and when I would leave.

That pre-divorce accounting was like clinging to the last branch on a cliffside as the earth beneath my feet crumbled. The alternative would have been to jump into the river below, unsure whether I would sink or swim. That list was my lifeboat.

“I prefer a list,” I told Diane, determined to do this my way, wondering if I was getting my money’s worth from this self-proclaimed life wizard.

“Okay,” Diane said. “But does this self-management style still serve you well?”

I made many lists in the months before I quit my job. Was I setting myself up to fail?

Even though we weren’t Zooming—Diane would always be a disembodied voice on the phone—I sat by habit in front of my computer. On my monitor stand was a plaque an employee had given me. White letters embossed on a faux walnut-grained panel, like an old-school office nameplate. It read. DO EPIC SHIT.

My lists had always been long and ambitious.

Shortly after I bought the house in Vermont, I planned to take a six-week sabbatical from work. “It was a 200-year-old farmhouse, and there was a lot to do,” I told the story to Diane as Kitty climbed into my lap, purring with contentment.

My list began with renovation tasks like cleaning and painting. Since Felix was working, I’d be in Vermont by myself much of the time, so I added creative tasks for my free time: learn to knit, learn to play guitar, start writing a book.

For two weeks, I vacuumed mouse droppings, scrubbed floors, and wiped woodstove grime from walls and windows. At the end of each day, sore and discouraged, I binge-watched West Wing—the guitar and skeins of wool-gathered dust next to my chair.

“I’m too tired to write or do any of the fun things I’d planned,” I cried to Felix over the phone.

I was sitting at a café when a wave of stress and misery flooded me. The sun was warm, the leaves turning crimson and gold, and a plate of locally sourced food and craft brew sat in front of me, but I didn’t feel relaxed or happy. I felt defeated.

Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell

said (and drew) the advice I wished I had at the time in this January interview with

On Substack

“I try my best to follow my to-do lists, but sometimes, life just doesn’t work that way. And sometimes the things you weren’t supposed to do, end up inspiring your best work.

Cartoon by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell

“I need a better plan,” I said, pushing Kitty out of my lap.

“Planning takes you out of the moment,” Diane said. “There’s no quiet space to listen to your intuition.”

“I can’t just go willy-nilly quitting my job,” I said, though a thought struck me. My sabbatical to-do list was impossible to achieve and yet I felt I had failed. Maybe the unchecked items were symbols of my other failures—everything I’d ever left unfinished, all the paths I didn’t pursue, all the expectations I hadn’t met.

Could I be more patient and kinder to myself if I didn’t have a plan to measure up to?

“Try sitting with your ideas before putting them to paper,” Diane said as we ended the session. “You’re a blur. Let yourself catch up.”

I stole a glance at my action plan, then at the spinning hands on the clock, and took a deep breath. As I exhaled, I heard the seconds tick at a normal pace. Maybe the life wizard would be worth my time after all.

Rangeley doesn’t make lists, but he still is a blur.

What I wish I’d known

Lists have their place, but my reinvention from marketing manager to creative writer would not have happened if I’d followed the first list I drafted in January 2018. I hung on to it for a while, but then I let go. I fell and then floated to the surface and learned to swim.

Catherine

Suleika Jaouad

creates five lists instead of resolutions for the new year. In her newsletter The Isolation Journals, she writes:

“These lists are celebratory, energizing, exorcising, reassuring, and motivating. They quell my inner critic, reminding me that I’ve accomplished so much, that I know what I want, that I can face it all, that I have everything I need, and that I can dream as big as I dare.

Follow this link to her prompt for each of the five lists. Or, try this one:

What are you still hanging on to?

Take a deep breath, make a list, and then let that shit go.