"You Do Not Do, You Do Not Do"

Do you have days in which you feel like you've accomplished a lot, yet you also feel like you've accomplished just about nothing? Such an occurrence, at least in verbal reference, sounds impossible, yet we know from sad experience that it happens. Often. In fact, just yesterday I had a day like that. Many of us do. I couldn't even find time to shower until 3:08 p.m because of the meatloaf and the rolls and the creamed beef on toast I was making. So why do you suppose that is? How could such a paradox exist? Well, I have an idea.

We all start out the day with a sometimes mental, though frequently written, list of things we want to do. Unfortunately, our to-do lists are not all-inclusive because they cannot factor in the unexpected nor calculate how long it will take to accomplish it. Consequently, the things which we cannot predict take up all of the time in the day and prevent us from completing the tasks we had in mind to finish. Children become ill, the baby has twenty diaper blowouts, the car breaks down, and "the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga" (from a song by the same name); these are just a few of the things we cannot foresee. Thus, our lists lie incomplete, victims of the ravaging effects of the unpredicted and unpredictable. What can you do about this phenomenon? Absolutely nothing. "There [is] clearly nothing left to do but flop down on [your] shabby little couch and howl....Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating" (from O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi").

Okay, I admit, I was kidding just then. If I didn't have an idea about what to do, I would have written about something else. Something more useful. Feel free to flop is you must, but there is a way to circumvent frustration regarding our perpetual inability to complete a simple list of intended daily tasks.

Really? (sniff) What is it?

You need a to-did list.

A what?

You heard me. A to-did list. Unlike to-do lists, those nefarious lists of chores that you compile on torn pieces of Precious Moments stationery in the wee morning hours and stick to the door of your fridge with a homemade magnet ostentatiously flaunting the riveting words "If it is to be, it is up to me," a to-did list is compiled in the evening and shows you everything you have accomplished during the day. Sort of like a journal on a bit of a crumpled Post-it note.

Much of the frustration we feel about our to-do lists comes when we compare the 3 checked items we managed to accomplish--by miraculous means--to the 1500 unchecked items we could not get to. Luckily, a to-did list has no unchecked items because no sooner do you write down those 3 accomplished items from your to-do list--plus the 3278 items that you accomplished which were not written down--than you can go ahead and check them all off. You can go to bed think about the things you did do, instead of the things you did not.

Frustration, frustration, "you b------, I'm through" (from Sylvia Plath's "Daddy").