Let’s method the brand new 12 months with some encouragement to group.

Do you ever really feel like this? There’s a lot to try this I don’t know the place to start out. I consider every thing I’m chargeable for and every thing I’d like to perform, and I panic—and typically I cope by doing nothing in any respect.

Time to make a listing. When life will get cluttered, it may be a great factor to get an enormous sketchpad and simply checklist every thing you may consider that wants your consideration in a roundabout way. You don’t write something so as of significance or problem; you simply get it down so you may have a look at it. You then transfer to a different sheet of paper and begin sorting the mess on the primary sheet and throwing the gadgets in some unfastened order onto the second. You categorize nevertheless you need. Perhaps one checklist is “pressing,” one other one is “enjoyable,” one other is “folks I must spend time with.” The fantastic thing about lists is that you may work with them so that they serve you.

And it’s important that your checklist serve you, not the opposite manner round. When used nicely, lists might help you accumulate your self. However they will beat you up once you give them undue energy. It’s important to determine when it’s time—or not time—for a listing. It’s important to determine what sort of checklist it is going to be and what energy you’ll give it.

Generally you would possibly make a listing of all of the duties that should be completed—each final one—simply so that you can provide your self permission to cross out half of them and never fear about these. Or possibly you place that half on one other checklist to be handled later. In doing that, you’ve got relieved your self, for right now, of these duties and narrowed right now’s checklist to one thing that’s doable.

Lists are good for dreaming, for prioritizing, for serving to the thoughts make order out of a scenario that has turn into overwhelming. Not each individual enjoys lists. Actually, a listing for me is a considerably left-brained, straight-lined factor. One other form of individual would possibly reduce that sheet of paper into little items, each bit with one activity written on it, put these items of paper in a jar, after which draw out an merchandise for the day and go from there.

However once you make a listing—once you take what’s in your thoughts and put it out the place you may see it, deal with it, and do with it as you please—you regain some management over a thoughts gone berserk with litter and fear. A listing could be very useful this manner. The hot button is to by no means permit the checklist to be the boss. I now not count on to tick off every thing on a listing. It’s a mere software, one thing to assist me maintain my place, to maintain monitor of life’s particulars.

A Little Prayer for the Subsequent Step
I can’t management most of what occurs in life, however I get pleasure from the best way I can write down what’s on my thoughts and provides it some order that helps me proper now. Thanks for the flexibility to make lists. I ask that they might serve me nicely as I search extra order and calm in my life.

—Excerpted from Easy Acts of Shifting Ahead by Vinita Hampton Wright