Nagging Tasks

Here I am, today: Tuesday September 24. You'll notice I haven't posted since the 11th? I've noticed. I found myself repeatedly trying to get up the motivation to blog some more over the last couple of weeks. I take photos all the time of the things going on around me; I constantly compose (witty! brilliant! insightful!) blog posts in my head, narrating this journey through life and the serenity or chaos that ensues. But sitting down to put those thoughts and images on the screen can sometimes become a job that builds up until the backlog of information is nothing more than a jumbled, incoherent blob of nonsense. Breaking the dam can feel like opening myself to a deluge of over-stimulation. Yet, it doesn't go away- it swirls and muddies and mixes with random sediment the longer it sits there. Thus:

"Nothing is so fatiguing 

as the eternal hanging on 

of an uncompleted task."

-- William James

Gretchen Rubin in The Happines Project calls these uncompleted jobs that don't go away Nagging Tasks. She went through the practice of making a written list of these tasks and crossing them off as she completed them, with the idea that writing them down gave them a certain concreteness that made them more accomplishable, and since she really like to give herself gold stars for her accomplishments, it felt good to cross them off her list. For the most part, I'm on board with Ms. Rubin. I even followed her example after reading the book, and created my own Nagging Task list and posted it in a prominent location so that I could cross things off, too. And I did accomplish many of those Naggers, and I did give myself mental gold stars for my good work. But my brain eventually worked in its usual way, and I found myself more and more easily able to ignore the remaining tasks. And once I trained myself to not notice the list, it was as if it didn't exist. After I finally got around to admitting I maybe needed to take the list down and figure out some other way to tackle the remaining items, it was time to make and entirely new list with new Nagging Tasks...

I believe that's the way with life, however. The Only Constant is Change, right? So no matter how many times I will make a Nagging Task list, and how many items I will cross off, and how many items will become obsolete by the time I get around to tackling them, there will always be another list. But I'm not sure that's a bad thing, either. How boring would life be if everything was taken care of? You'd likely be dead, because there would be nothing left to do. Increasingly on my Nagging Task list are the really happy things I want to work on: including exercise nearly everyday instead of reserving it for short bursts of intensity that feel like work; draw or paint or somehow apply fine arts daily (yes, daily!); engage positively with my children and my spouse each and everyday; spend time with people who matter to me, and let them know they matter to me; and I've even included on my list sharing my thoughts and photos on a blog regularly.  The quandary is that I can never cross off these most important tasks. They are perpetual. I will always be working on the improvement of my application of them. And in turn, these tasks will improve me.

Of course, the question becomes one of tracking. Does writing down these tasks make me more likely to accomplish them? Perhaps. They are now officially documented on this blog, so they've gained a presence here.

And wait a minute– here I am, today. And I can cross this blog post off my list. And give myself a big gold star. Turns out, a journey of a thousand words* starts with a single idea.

*I couldn't help myself: I had to check. 650 is the answer. And thanks to my hubby for the quote, which, ironically, he wrote down and posted in nearly the same spot as my previous Nagging Task lists...