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’Tis the Season to Triage Your To-Do List
Cross off and forgive yourself for the stuff you’ll never do
Sometimes a to-do list can be a life raft. How else would you remember by 7 p.m. that when you left the house at 7 a.m. there was nary a square of toilet paper in the whole place? (Asking for a friend.)
But there are also times when even the most well-intentioned to-do list can start feeling like a burden. Or a rude reminder of your own failures. Or even a disruptive source of stress and anxiety.
That’s especially true at the end of the year, which has a way of ratcheting up the frenzy factor. The mundane chores of everyday life are suddenly joined by an armada of holiday prep action items. There are gift lists to manage and precarious gingerbread houses to engineer and knobs of wax to dig out of the Hanukkah menorah while cursing under your breath, as tradition demands. You have to figure out what a bough of holly even is and what you’re supposed to do with it. And then there are the end-of-year deadlines and accountings of various sorts, as well as things you meant to do ages ago that are suddenly, urgently overdue. (Whose idea was it to put fall and Christmas and New Year’s all right next to each other, anyway?)
Repeat after me: You are not going to get it all done. It’s too late. And you know what? It’s fine. Here’s a four-step guide to triaging your to-do list so you can start the new year with a clean slate — and, more importantly, a clean conscience.
Knock out your most urgent chores
The first step is to identify the things that absolutely need to be done immediately and do them poorly. Yes, I said “poorly.”
As a former boss of mine used to say, “Perfect is the enemy of done.” Studies have shown that what people call perfectionism is often veiled procrastination. And procrastination is a form of self-sabotage. Don’t sabotage yourself! That’s your scheming next-door neighbor’s job, and taking away Karen’s main source of pleasure would not be very merry of you!
So, look around: What really, truly needs to happen right now? Maybe you need to submit those overdue work expenses before the quarter’s end. Do it, even if you have to endure a lecture from…
