Why I stopped making lists!

I was a chronic list maker. From the time I worked in big firms where the only way to get through your next 100 activities was to have a prioritized list of top 20 tasks for the day TO when I stayed at home and planned the things I need to buy, the tasks I needed to complete to have the school admission documents set & ready and so forth, I loved writing it all down in a dated, numbered, to-do fashion in my little black book. And the best part was the tick-off. That satisfaction of completing a task was never really real till one could tick it off from the list. AND the satisfaction from completing the last task of the day, when you ticked off the page itself, whoa! that just cannot be replicated. So yeah, making lists is heady and very satisfactory.

But then like any thing that is heady and satisfying it has a definite downside. And mine was the stress. And probably the addiction.

So, as we all know, each task consists of a number of sub-tasks.
For eg., if one of my tasks said "Get XYZ layout from consultant TODAY!" it would involve me sending an official mail asking for the layout, then giving them a friendly call to make sure everything is on track and to know an approximate time when I could get the same;
There, in case the consultant needed some other detail before they could complete the layout in stipulated time, those had to be arranged for them (which included a couple more mails and calls to other parties) and so on.
So then, I would realize that it would take forever for me to tick off that one task from the list. But, if I couldn't tick things off from the list in a certain time frame I started feeling like I was getting nowhere, like things were not getting done and that it was a very unproductive day. Here I started fretting and stressing. So, in order to feel better and to feel like I have achieved something, I started listing out these little sub-tasks and then ticking them off!Of course, I also listed the sub-tasks so that I wouldn't forget even the smallest of them. Hence the stress and the addiction combined.

Now, the moment I broke down the 20 tasks into 5 sub-tasks each, I'd have a list of 100 tasks to be completed "on priority" today and just looking at it would push me over the edge. These tasks being things like small phone calls and email reminders which would otherwise just get done as part of a normal day without much thought.

The worst part was when I noticed this same trend repeating into everyday chores. The moment I started thinking about and listing down all I would have to do before I packed the kid off to school for example, I would already start fretting.

When things got totally our of hand and the stress mounted immensely, I just started ditching my list and getting through whatever I could get through. And with this was discovered peace of mind. Tasks get done with much less stress. Of course, old habits die hard and I still write small reminders and notes on the major things I simply cannot afford to forget for the day. But I have realized that most things just get done in their own time and we really don't forget the important ones so much. So much more breathing space and calm. Phew!