Beating Back Burnout with Small Moments of Grace

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

I love a good to-do list. There’s something satisfying about building it and feeling the optimism that all the entries on it might be completed. The real payoff comes from crossing off the items, one by one, as each task is completed.

Besides the physical list, I have a list that runs in my head. It goes something like this: leave early for work to put gas in the car, find time to meditate, eat fewer carbs today, remind my son to make a doctor’s appointment, stop at the grocery store on the way home for salad fixings, etc.

Lists are great for making the most of limited time. The problem with lists, though, is that as soon as one task gets crossed off, there’s always another to take its place.

Left unchecked, productivity becomes a tyrannical taskmaster. There’s a fatal flaw in Denzel Washington’s line in the movie, The Great Debaters: “Do what you gotta do so you can do what you wanna do.” After years of living with to-do lists, everything started to feel like a “gotta do.” The trick became distinguishing between what really must be done from what can be put off or let go entirely.

This is especially challenging for me, a Type A, firstborn overachiever whose learned response to childhood trauma is staying busy in a bid to avoid thinking or feeling.