Work-Life-Task Balance
Oh man. My sisters and I were reminiscing today about the luxury of “winter break” from school and the unfathomable pleasure of having two full weeks off with zero responsibility. Not a care in the world. No to-do list.
A carefree holiday break, examining Christmas stocking loot.
Reminiscing led to a vigorous and often humorous conversation about our current to-do lists. My sisters and I are high-functioning people. I doubt you could find a single person to dispute this (but don’t ask them to tell you our real flaws!) But we discovered today that each of us has to-do lists of small, personal tasks that is seemingly endless. This made me feel better because, honestly, I thought it was just me, falling short. Losing my touch.
But it’s not that. It’s being a college professor, a nurse, a lawyer, a mother, a dog parent, a wife, a girlfriend, a friend, and a human with basic need for food and sleep and maybe a little extra. And for the sake of normalizing this phenomenon, here are some of the items from our to-do lists. Seemingly simple things that just get pushed back and back:
open and organize mail
replace lost passport (ugh)
clean spit up from stroller (yuck)
find new primary care doctor (pain in the butt)
send in Covid vaccine card for travel to Hawaii (too many steps)
unpack from trip last week (no excuse)
catalogue and sell baby clothes that don’t fit (tedious)
pick up car from Seattle (where it’s been for three weeks)
activate new credit card (automated system)
call hospital about 51,000 separate bills from “Steven Johnson scare 2021” (not even attorneys fully understand medical billing)
drop off dry cleaning (are they even open that early/late??)
mail back Rent the Runway clothes (pending since September)
hang office artwork (physical labor + mental labor)
set up new voicemail (navigate archaic system that should be easier)
write thank you card to advisor (pending since August)
find handyman who doesn’t ghost you (dude, handy men are hard to find right now!)
send in title to vehicle to transfer plates to new state (government, so it’s 10x harder than it needs to be)
The un-unpackable suitcase.
I could go on, but I think you get the point.
For fun, we challenged each other to get one thing off our lists today. And we had fun updating each other. And got a small ego boost for checking that task off the list!
But why hadn’t these things been done?? Here’s why. Each of these things takes just long enough (sometimes longer) than we can spare. We only have so much capacity for decisions and actions in a day. I spend my days solving complex problems, using my emotional capacity to support very injured people who are often in distress and unable to advocate for themselves. I use my emotional and mental energy on them. My sister Julia has two children under age three. Someone has been sick continuously since August. She uses her emotional and mental energy on them. My sister Hannah is a brand new college professor who just moved to an entirely new state. She uses her emotional and mental energy navigating several huge life changes. So someone didn’t pay a parking ticket.
Guess what? At the end of the day, no one will remember the parking ticket you forgot. Except, perhaps, the government.
The crusty stroller — this task has been HANDLED!
