Taming To-Do List Terrors

The holiday season is always a time filled with hustle-and-bustle, but this year I'm feeling additionally daunted by the many tasks that loom before me in the year-to-come. The year will begin with the monthly ten-day visit of my little granddaughters, which means I won't even begin serious work until January is a third over. And there is so much to do in January - so much to do!! I have three mentees through the mentoring program sponsored by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators who are launching their six-month mentorship with me - and my first-ever online course to prepare for the spring semester (for which to date I've done nothing) - and contracts (with deadlines) on two new chapter books - and a verse novel I'm groping toward which is dear to my heart - and even a reading group I'm in on James Joyce's Ulysses (and if you think the reading for that is a breeze, you are greatly mistaken!)

So of course I went to my little notebook where I figure out all my life problems, and here is what Wise Claudia wrote to Terrified Claudia.

CAN I DO IT ALL? Terrified Claudia wrote.

Wise Claudia replied: OF COURSE!

And then, together, Wise Claudia and Terrified Claudia made a Panic Defusion Plan.

1) I reminded myself that it's amazing and wonderful that I still have my own overwhelming to-do list despite two heartbreaking family tragedies I'm embroiled in. All of these items on my to-do list are MY items, things I'm doing for ME. Which means: I still exist!!! How fortunate I am to have so many projects I'm looking forward to - so much work I truly love to do.

2) I have ALWAYS panicked about getting things done and I have always gotten them done (maybe not ALL of them, and maybe not EXACTLY on time, but close enough). As the saying goes: "The best predictor of the future is the past."

3) My phone now has some feature on it that gives me a weekly report of how many hours a day I average in staring at its little screen. The number is sickening. I hate to even admit it here, but I might as well. For one week, the number was - oh, can I bear to confess this? - THREE HOURS A DAY. Chastened, I did all I could the following week not to reach for the phone, and then learned I had reduced my phone-staring by 30 percent - to a still-staggering two hours a day. It will be a blessing to be FORCED to stop doing this!

4) It will also be a blessing to be forced to be productive even when my granddaughters are here. I will now HAVE to hire nannies sometimes - ooh!!! And I will HAVE to use my downtime to get stuff done rather than, yes, staring at the phone in an exhausted daze. I will have to figure out a way to have work-life balance - and that is a GOOD thing, right?

5) MANY MANY people have VASTLY longer to-do-lists than mine, and they get it all done. One of my writer friends teaches, not one course in a semester, but FIVE - and still writes books - and hosts write-ins at her house - and weaves gorgeous blankets on her loom - and is in a book group, too - and takes long weekly bike rides. If she can do all of that, I can do my piddly stuff.

6) Finally, I'm actually happier when I'm busy. I ADORE getting stuff done. When my boys were little, I'd ask them, "What does Mommy like? and they would give the correct answer: "Progress!"

As life coach Martha Beck wrote in a great blog post, "being alive means having things to do."
We might as well stop fretting about them and simply start getting them done.

So now I'm off to read the novel-length manuscript from mentee number three....