Do you ever catch up with the zillions of tiny details on your to-do list? I do not.
Having just hosted a book launch event last weekend, my head was swimming for several months with "all the dumb details." I couldn't catch up to myself and I was driving myself batty. Yet how many of those event details were actually necessary and crucial?
Sitting one day with my little sister Pamela on a Friday morning in pedi chairs to make our large feet look somewhat more convincingly pretty, I was whining I still had so much to do a week before the event. About one of the tasks, she stopped me and asked, "Is that one really necessary?" Hmmmm.
Upon reflection, I realized she was being smarter than me. There was a decorative 'Little Italy' board I wanted to borrow from my church. It would have required driving my husband's giant truck 30 minutes into Baltimore City, loading the large painted board, toting it home, setting it up, then returning it after the event. It wasn't a crucial piece of the puzzle, it was simply a fun decoration. Without it, could I still host the event? Yes. Would anyone know it was missing? No. So I listened to my little sister and scratched it off the list. Next!
My smart sister said the "wise man" who lives in her house labels this example high labor, low return. "My husband taught me this a long time ago and I try to apply it to life when possible," she said. "It’s very useful when doing a large project, yet works more than you’d think in daily life."
As we strive to simplify life's zillion details wherever we can, we need to ask ourselves if that extra to-do thing is worth our time. Does it require driving too far or tackling a task on which we don't have spare time? Does it use you as the middle-woman when you could skip being that? Does it require unnecessarily making something, moving something, signing up for something, responding to something, planning something, or - heavens no !!! - creating yet one more user name & password???
Would it affect anything if you scratched it off the list? Truly, would anyone except you notice or realize it wasn't done ... included ... present?
Could we do without doing it?
Shrink the list. Stop working extra hard for nothing.
