I mean, let’s say hypothetically it’s Friday morning. Your head is feeling like scrambled eggs because you were up tending to global affairs with only two hours sleep, or because you were partying like it’s 1969, or in fact your teenage-something had a mini meltdown, combined with perimenopause fog detritus means that you have only a vague idea what your name is (I’ve purposely left this open ended so you have no idea which is me). You are aware that there are a mountain of things to be done, and you’d quite like to be placed in a sensory deprivation tank, possibly only drawing birds, but the world keeps prodding your pre-frontal cortex saying there are things that definitely need to get done.
At times like this, my friends, it’s important to hand over your executive function to other beings. And the being in my life right now is a great long list. And for an extra shot of dopamine, I recommend adding check boxes beside them so you can tick things off.
There’s nothing that will make a hormonal, feeling-like-the-bottom-of-a-pond-creature more accomplished than being able to add a big fat tick next to a thing that just got done.
Writing stuff down is, indeed, a magical thing. Those in the writing business know that we frequently understand ourselves better after, not before, the pen hits the page. That the purpose is not to arrive with the answers, but with all the many questions, and to hope, in some way, that we will scribe our way to the answers.
Lists are, perhaps, the most unromantic of all forms of writing, but they can still be a bloody good time. If you can’t be trusted to be left to your own devices for that day (week, month) then let a list take that gelatinous matter that used to be your brain and help you direct it usefully.
It helps you prioritise, reduce the overwhelm of all that bigness into tiny pockets of doable smallness, and stops you wondering about all the things you’ve forgotten while you sit around doing nothing.
It’s an exercise in simplification. In recognising the reality of where you are today, and turning the fuzz into action things. And the brain does love a bit of purpose. It’s entirely functional in its design. It hates it when you or I just stay up there, caught in overthinking.
So if that’s you (saving the world / hungover / caught in a hormonal rampage), may I suggest you make yourself a list. Take away the decision fatigue of your day and just tick off what needs to be done.
Sometimes, the things that are the most mundane will bring the most relief.
Last night’s beginning “Birds that visited my feeder” drawing, to keep me focused and less irritable at the kitchen table.