Welcome to December! For many people, this is one of the most stressful months on the entire calendar. The holidays alone can be a source of energy or stress, depending on your circumstances and personality. They come with an awful lot of “stuff”: financial pressure, family pressure, social pressure, religious pressure, and now pandemic pressure as well. (What do you mean, no enormous extended family Christmas parties?) The time displaced by face-to-face gatherings is likely more than made up for in extensive hand-wringing about how to do the holidays in this incredibly strange year we’re all having.
Before you make yourself sick from all of this, take a deep breath and consider this: you don’t have to do it all at once. Instead, break these things up into their individual tasks and do one at a time. No matter what your project or goal is, from losing weight to planning Christmas, you will lose more time by panicking over how much there is to do than if you start somewhere and start chipping away at it. I used to sit down and list out all of the open projects I had to work on in one giant list. This was not good for my anxiety, as the sight of that list could really freak my brain out. Instead, I found a measure of peace when I began the practice of scheduling when I would do my tasks as I thought of them. Not everything needs to be done today. In schools, they used to teach the use of assignment books, where you write down when things are due in a planner. In college, I took this practice further and started planning when I would write my papers. Because I was taking a ridiculous courseload each quarter, this practice allowed me to leisurely write 1-3 papers each Sunday morning instead of losing sleep to get them done. In my entire college career, I never pulled a single academic all-nighter. Both my work and play were better for it. Unfortunately, when we get into the messiness of the non-academic world, it can be easy to forget that these skills transfer. There is a great deal more variety to the odds and ends that we do as adults and fewer externally imposed deadlines. This can trick us into considering this method useless (and hey, if you’re exceptionally high-functioning and can stay on top of your life without the help, good for you), but actually, for most folks, it’s very handy. By scheduling your tasks, you have a sequence to follow. Instead of stressing your brain out by having to make constant decisions, organizing your tasks in time gives you a sense of what is urgent. If you’re really winning at doing this, you’ll schedule a few of the things in this life that are important but less urgent as well--like calling your relatives every once in a while to tell them you love them. By seeing things laid out on a schedule, you can keep yourself from biting off more than you can chew in one day. It could take you time to figure out what you can and cannot do in one day. Recently, I gave myself a day and a half’s worth of solo work to do on a Tuesday that already contained appointments. Fortunately, it turned out fine because I was able to start on that day’s work the previous Thursday after following the sequence of tasks I had laid out well enough to get a little bit ahead. Knowing where you are in time on your task lists can give you the option to work ahead and brace against the unexpected. It can also reveal to you where you may simply not have enough time for something and have to say “no.” The greatest gift of planning and scheduling, though, is having a clearer sense of when you are “done.” When you finish the day’s tasks, there may be more stuff you can work ahead on, but you have the security of knowing that even if something comes up, you will be fine for the next day. You can leave the day’s work and engage with your loved ones in your off time knowing that you’ve given it your best for the moment. We plan and God laughs, but by planning, we are better prepared for whatever this crazy world has to throw at us. Whether you’re planning the holidays or finishing off work for the year, scheduling these tasks will give you more peace and concentration as you work. Meanwhile, life goes on, and you can actually enjoy living it. (For another perspective on this topic, see this article: https://forge.medium.com/be-a-schedule-builder-not-a-to-do-list-maker-396096a7486a?utm_source=pocke)
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AuthorJillian Lutes is the youth pastor at West Covina Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church. Archives
May 2020
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