Living Well in the Midst of Getting Things Done

I often find myself doing too many things at once. I start on one project, pause to send off a few emails that have been nagging at me, remember a text I need to send, and notice a few unpaid bills on my desk. Soon hours have passed, and it seems I have accomplished nothing in particular.

Following through on one endeavor and getting it done would, of course, be better. But that’s the problem, focus eludes me. I feel assailed by everything awaiting my attention. The to-do list expands faster than what I can cross off. Flitting from one item to another on the list means that things requiring sustained attention remain half-finished, calling out their incompletion.

The worst days are when I tell myself I absolutely must make progress and then I force myself to take on the most onerous items, such as calling my health insurance provider to find out why a claim was denied. The phone tree I’m on keeps branching out until I can’t recall how I found myself so far out on the wrong limb. To hang up is to start over, to choose Option 5, then Option 2, and then sit through a repetition of options that contains nothing that I was seeking in the first place. Yelling “Agent! Agent!” sometimes gets a human, sometimes not, but it all adds up to what feels like a forfeiture of life.

I hear my friends expressing regret about frittering away hours on their phones, giving in to the seduction of wasted time. Whether through social media or random browsing, they say following one thread and then another becomes a kind of sinkhole into which whole parts of a day can disappear. Pressures mount from their ever-expanding lists, whether work-related or personal and then the impetus to flee the list itself further intensifies.

I have written about how difficult it can be to quiet the mind and be in the present moment, but here I am talking about what it means to use time well. Lately, I have begun asking myself what I really want to do aside from work responsibilities and the other things I am supposed to be doing. What would make my day? What is the call of my heart?

Posing such questions halts the onslaught of minutia. I am provoking myself. Since my time on this earth is limited, then what can I make of this day to be worth remembering or at least savoring? Getting up early to listen to birdsong or calling an out-of-touch friend out of the blue? I could pump up the tires of my bicycle and go for a ride. This morning, I decided to find my container of glue, spread out some scrap paper, and re-attach the handle on my favorite mug. Handling the glue and seeing the mug restored was inordinately satisfying. I love piecing together fractured ceramics. The point is, I made everything else wait.

Copyright: Wendy Lustbader, 2024