Anxiety and To-Do List

Coming back from holiday break is always hard. I’ve been home in NYC for over a month and a half and I’m just feeling settled back in. I’m not alone though. Anytime a colleague or a friend returns from a long break we talk about the difficulty of getting back in the flow of everyday life. This particular time felt even more jolting than normal, and I began to wonder how I juggled my life before vacation.

These days, I maintain a pretty healthy work life balance. So it was surprising that upon my return, I had to force myself to stop and take time away. I also felt very overwhelmed with the amount of tasks I was trying to handle both at work and in my real life.

At one particularly tense moment at work, I decided to step away and do some thought work for 15 minutes. I learned about thought work from a podcast called UNF*CK YOUR BRAIN hosted by life coach Kara Loewentheil. I’ve referenced her teachings before and can’t recommend her enough. Kara teaches a method called the Thought Ladder (which you can learn about here). I began the 15 minute session by reciting a neutral thought to myself: “I have successfully managed multiple events at the same time before.”

About 10 minutes went by and I caught myself repeating something different: “Your to-do list will never be finished.” I stopped immediately and wrote that phrase down. I later determined that this was the remedy to my post-holiday anxiety.

As soon as I’d returned home, I’d added to-do after to-do after to-do to my to-do list. I was focusing so hard on checking every item off of my list as once it was checked off, I could finally relax. But, when I started to repeat that phrase, it clicked: my to-do list would truly never be finished. I’m always adding to it everyday and will rarely have every item checked off, and the moments wherein I have completed the list are rare.

I needed to make peace with my to-do list, and I did so by simply changing how I thought about the list. It’s not about checking everything off as quickly as I can so I can finally relax. The goal is to be more strategic about making sure everything is done on time and always allotting time to rest and recharge. Recharging isn’t something I earn by finishing my to-do list, it’s something I need to make time for each day.

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