The Irritation List

I live by To-Do lists. They are my life. Even if it is something I do every week, I would still forget without my To-Do list. When I was in High School, loooonnng before computers were a thing, I used to keep track of everything in one of those little purse calendars. They were the size of a checkbook with a vinyl cover that usually had a pretty picture on it. Inside, there was a calendar page for every month of the year.

I lost mine once and never found it. More than forty years ago and I still feel the loss. I still remember the horrible emptiness of not knowing where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing. It still hurts!!!

The problem with To-Do lists is that they are usually in order by priority and there are always items on that list that move to the top as being more important than others. And other items that never move up.

Grocery Shopping is usually high on the list every week. Gotta have food. Paying bills is another one. Can’t skip that one. Getting my taxes done is low on the list in February but when it finally reaches mid-March, suddenly it moves right to the top. Which it did today.

But there are some things that are too unimportant to ever make it to the top of the list. Things like changing a lightbulb in the garage [the other one still works, right?], washing the car, polishing the scuffs on my leather shoes, replacing the batteries in our emergency flashlight, dusting the blades of the ceiling fan, cleaning out the junk drawer, etc. ad infinitum.] Plus a hundred other little things like that.

The problem is that all those little things pile up and each day as I brush past them, I become more and more agitated. It’s like having a lot of little ants crawling all over me. For some reason, not getting those little things done made me feel like a failure.

So one day I created an Irritation List. All of those little things that I just want done. And I made THAT list my priority. I spent a Saturday doing them all. I was surprised at how fast I was done. Most of them only took a few minutes.

As I checked off one thing after another, a huge weight seemed to lift off of me. I couldn’t believe how much better I felt. Amazingly, I still had time for the big, more important things. They got done, too.

No big revelation here but if this is an issue with you, may I suggest you make an Irritation List. One tip though, you’re not allowed to put any people on it. That’s a whole different irritation list.