I have a tendency to make a lot of lists. In a lot of ways, lists are reasonable, practical, helpful, and encouraging. They carefully outline what I need to do, create, purchase, and accomplish, usually within the time constraint of one day (e.g. a to-do list created on Thursday should have all of the tasks completed by the end of Thursday). Lists are a resource you can refer to so you can be sure everything is accomplished and not forgotten. They also seem to take a lot of joy out of every day tasks.
Bear with me.
A kind of ironic story:
I picked up a book titled, 'Drive: The Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us," by Daniel H. Pink. The foundation of the book is that a person's main motivator should be internal, rather than external. That is, a person will produce more work of value and do more spectacular things if the root of whatever they do is curiosity, a quest for mastery, and autonomy, as opposed to the carrots and sticks approach so often implemented by parents, teachers, and employers. It's actually a really good book to introduce people to unschooling because it makes you think in an unschooling way without actually talking about unschooling directly.
Anyway, so as this book is making the case that I would accomplish more if I did things in the quest for autonomy, mastery, enjoyment, and curiosity, instead of external indicators of my accomplishments, I've been relying more and more upon daily to-do lists. I really like the feeling I get when I cross something out. It's just very satisfying to check something off, to say I completed a task. I don't just make them for things like scooping cat poo and daily exercise, but for more creative tasks as well: reading for pleasure, reading Tarot cards, playing vocabulary games, etc. I didn't write down a lot of those things in the past, but I added them recently because I figured that it would make me feel better if I got that feeling of satisfaction with things I would do anyway. But then something weird happened. Something I never suspected would occur, even though it's precisely the content of the book I've been reading for the past week:
Several tasks became significantly less enjoyable and slightly stressful. Reading went by slower and I found myself not absorbing information as well, while I found myself performing less creatively and getting lower scores on my vocabulary game.*
So. Last night, as I sat down to make my to-do list for today, I stopped. I'm going to try to go a day with out a to-do list, even for things like scooping poo and daily exercise (shouldn't your exercise of choice be enjoyable anyway?). I'm going to see how it goes. I'm curious to see if I will get anything less accomplished, or if there will simply be more joy within the tasks I do complete.
I'm also going to complete a task suggested by the book. Recording all "noninstrumental tasks," ie: tasks I do for my own enjoyment, rather than work that just needs to be done.
Except I just realized I can't do that today because it is a list. Awkward.
*The vocabulary game is really, really cool. There are three rounds, each with a different prefix. So, round one, you might get "uni", round two you might get "pic", and round three you might get "dis." Your task is to come up with as many words as possible within the minute or so allotted.
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