The death-defying to-do list

A mind in motion tends to stay in motion; a mind at rest has to deal with its eventual cessation.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I get a little panicky when my Post-it supply runs out ‘cos they’re what I use to make my to-do lists. My “tasks for today” list is the key that starts the engine of my executive functioning – attentional control, working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, planning, and reasoning and problem solving. Without it, my head will shuffle between paralysis, worry and melancholia. Without the dopamine hits that come from checking items off my list, the idea of getting off this ride might actually sound reasonable.

Without my list, I’d feel unmoored, less able to carry out the tasks of daily living. With my "tasks for today" list I'll have little missions for the next 24-hours, which in turn helps me structure my time and move through the day with purpose. This list is like a map that helps me wade through what would otherwise feel like an uncontrollable existence. It helps me feel less anxious and more focused as I navigate this thing called “my life”.

I also have a “further down the road” to-do list, which might include vacation planning, items that I am thinking of buying but don’t need just yet, scheduling the start date to learn a new language, books I want to read when I find the time, the names of friends I want to reach out, or subjects I want to know more about. The “further down the road” list helps me feel less uncertain and more enthusiastic about an unknown future. It helps me believe that I’ll have many more tomorrows, even though I know that today may be my final day.

While lists are terrific goal setting and time management tools, there is one small problem: the items on them, once completed, always get replaced by new ones. And if we run out of things to put on our lists, we can always seek out pre-made lists online like the NY Times “100 Best Movies of the 21st Century”, the Independent’s list of “40 best books to read before you die”, or Conde Naste’s annual best travel destinations or best hotels list.  

I've wondered what it might be like to wake up and not have a set number of things to attend to. I find the idea disconcerting, because if my mind gets too quiet, if it's not sufficiently entertained, then it gets drawn to contemplating what its inevitable demise might feel like.

Not everyone makes written lists, but most people have mental to-do lists. Designed for movement, the mind is a creative machine that needs to perpetually devise ways to stimulate consciousness through constant engagement with our five senses and our environment (through commerce, education, social interaction and communication, art making, movement, ritual, housekeeping, eating, drinking, reading, writing, listening to music, or having novel experiences etcetera). Keeping active (even if it is only in our imagination) maintains the health of our executive functions. As a highly cognitive species, keeping mentally active is essentially the only way we can trust that we’re still alive.

Even though it causes her arthritis to flare up, my 90-year grandmother still insists on doing the laundry, ironing clothes and cooking every day. She says she can’t “not do anything”, that she would “lose her mind” if she didn’t have these activities to keep her occupied for parts of the day. I know where she’s coming from.

As a kid, I would crawl into a credenza by the side of my bed, slide the doors shut and imagine I was in a coffin. Then I would envision myself in the afterlife. In my mind’s eye, what I saw was me as a giant little girl, as big as God, resting atop a big fluffy cloud high up in the blue sky. But I was all alone there with nothing but clouds all around me. The scariest part of this vision was that I would exist in this state, stuck on this white cloud, isolated from everything and everyone for ever and ever and ever, amen! A day with no missions makes me feel like I'm in that credenza again.

I think staying engaged with life through activities, making all those lists (bucket lists, grocery lists, shopping lists, schedules, shit lists etcetera) comes naturally to most relatively well functioning people because being completely still (physically and mentally) feels very uncomfortable. Perhaps this is because, when unstimulated and motionless, the mind experiences a state akin to being dead. I come closest to stillness when I meditate, but even then, a part of me is aware that I’m “doing” the task of meditation, that I am going into stillness voluntarily, that I’m making the experience of stillness my mission. This awareness of agenda-ed stillness protects me from the full force of the felt-sense of non-consciousness.

I don’t know if it’s a blessing or curse, but this question comes into my mind often: “Will I make it? Will I make it through this day?” I think my to-do list serves as some kind of make-belief insurance policy against a "No". I am squirmish about the reality of my own impermanence. I’m not yet ready to die. So I will continue filling those Post-its.