States of Doing. States of Being.

How to Cope with Being Perpetually Busy

I write ideas for writing on index cards. This, after decades of writing them in my journals and then having them disappear, not my journals, but the writing prompts. I’d finish the journal, start on the next and usually those prompts would live in a dark closet with all the others. There are times, I think this is a good thing, there are things that I have written that should probably NEVER see the light of day, and truth be told, it can be hard to decide. Who am I to add to the great silt pile of words produced by people and then publicly shared? Which is probably why for now, my site is not indexed, I kept it somewhat hidden so in many ways, this blog is still a dark closet. Anyway. Here you are. Here I am.

There is something inherently human about list-making, like once we could keep that information externally, rather than embedding it in stories, fables, plays, and really long poems, eventually were scratching in the dirt, etching on clay, styling on papyrus, penning on paper, and the list (so-to-speak) goes on

Anyway, when I first came up with the writing prompt (undated), I was thinking about states of being as a way to cope with being perpetually busy. There will always be something else to do. But what about ways to be?

My business card used to be a reminder of this. On one side, it had my contact info. And on the other the words “be kind, be generous, be happy.”

When the initial idea for the prompt appeared, I thought this might be a better approach…to list ways to be or feel rather than to do. Take today for example. Today, I have a board meeting in two hours, I’m supposed to send a big sheaf of drawings off for a big report I am working on, do my books, and those are just the things I think about without breaking a sweat or pulling out the actual list where they were written down and which includes many more things.

And oh yes, write.

So, if the lead item on my list was, “be happy” Would that then make it easier to decide what to include or not to include?

Organizing my drawings to send, that will not make me happy because I’m not happy with the drawing. Sending them will likely cause the send associated panic of “are these okay” but on some level, getting that done will make me…satisfied? Content? But preceding all those words is a helping verb, “I feel…”.

Maybe that action-oriented list is easier. If I write down, “mail letter to Secretary of State” I know I’ve done it. But happiness, it is so gray and gradated, when are you happy enough? When is happiness done? is it happy for a moment, an hour, a day?

Then there is the small matter of why does it has to be either? Why can’t it be,

“send letter to the Secretary of State so that I can stop worrying about it.”

“post this damn blog post so if the rest of the day goes to hell, at least I can feel good about having done that”.

So here is an idea, take your to-do list, take the first five items (and if you are a ONE THING) person, well do that and if you are a GTD, just restrain yourself) and write

At the end of the day, see if you hit your mark, did your action align with your desired emotional result. There is no right or wrong answer, just notice. Then, take a moment to reflect on what, if anything you might do differently tomorrow if the action didn’t result in the desired emotion. If useful, repeat at the beginning and end of each day.

Related posts:

So I am preparing for a Full Stack Developer Interview. Here’s my stack: HTML/CSS | Javascript | Angular | Python | MySQL | AWS | Git. I’ll share my thoughts on brushing up with each technology and…

A Merkle Tree is a tree in which every node is labeled with a hash, and every branch is hashed with the contents of its child nodes. The topmost node is called the root and the bottom-most nodes are…

Researchers believe that the pyramids, which are about 1,600 meters deep, represent the ruins of the lost city of Atlantis. The two researchers discovered the pyramids while exploring the ocean floor…