I
've written before about the Do It Tomorrow system of which I've become quite enamored. I've been using it for more than four months now, and it has become a natural rhythm; I've also gone through a few breakdowns of the system, and am learning more about what causes them, and how to deal with them afterward.
What I've noticed is that every so often my lists will feel very short for about a week, then suddenly very long. I'll have to struggle through the lengthy lists for a couple days, and then things re-normalize, and I get back to average list length. What's going on here?
I think it's a confluence of a couple things. One is "high profile events", such as parties that have to be planned, looked forward to, executed, and then cleaned up after. These events take a lot of attention and mental energy, and I end up not being very close to my daily planner for several days in a row. This means that things that I would normally be putting on my list and taking care of the following day never get written down at all, and thus start to form an invisible logjam in my future when they all become more urgent and I recall them.
The other rhythm that affects my task-clearing is the ebb and flow of my own attentiveness. Take a look at some of the things that are on my closed list for tomorrow: Glue boot heel; Throw out coffee grounds; Start to fix chairs; Take apart cat tower; Clean car; Clean tools. What's notable about this list, at least for me, living the life that produced it, is that all of these things have been around for a while! Each of them could have been on any particular day's closed list for two weeks; but I noticed, and actually wrote them all down, only today. I've been in an inattentive period recently, where I wasn't noticing the things that surrounded me that needed a little bit of TLC. Today, though, I felt these little doings catch at me as I passed by them -- and I have the wherewithal to actually grab my planner and put them down.
These spikes of attentiveness can occasionally make things overwhelming. That's why it's so important to be paying attention regularly and actively to one's life; if you keep this habit up for a while, you will smooth out the little things that are always cropping up, taking care of them the day after they arise, and preventing the logjams from building up, and crushing your spirit.