As promised last week, let’s think about what’s important. As we remember back to the concept of tasks that are some variety of urgent and some variety of important we have to understand what those two concepts mean. I think everyone understands urgent. I’ve never had a lot of confusion with that. But important… that’s a different story. When I talk about task management, I use the phrase the machinery of moving life forward. What does that mean?
Yes, there are the obvious things like paying the mortgage, feeding your kids, getting your car inspected. But what about maintaining social relationships? What about self-care? As much as I consider myself a maniacally efficient person. I spent a lot of my day grinding through my to do list. I also work out almost every day, meditate when I need to, get eight hours of sleep, eat well and have a decent amount of downtime. I watch a lot of European soccer. Fundamentally, as human beings, think we need to live balanced lives. As ADHD humans, I think this is even more important. Unless you’re grinding away at something that you’re super passionate about, everything will get worse if you don’t maintain a certain amount of balance.
For my wife, going to the salon and getting her nails done every couple of weeks, relaxing and spending a few hours without the kids, is really important. It’s beautification, self-care, and personal time. For me, exercise, downtime, and social interaction. The latter is the hardest and the one that I have to work on the most. But they’re all important. So giving yourself that psychological space, but also the actual time to do things like, make an appointment to get a massage, to get reservations and a babysitter so you can go out to dinner and have date night with your significant other, or carving out time to go for a hike and get both fresh air, exercise, and sunshine, is really important.
Without getting into my system for task management, I will just say that if your to do list is all drudgery that creates a life that is all drudgery, you probably won’t use it. But if you’re to do list supports a vital, healthy, well balanced life, then you’ll probably be more inclined to use it and actually get the hard stuff done while counterintuitively enjoying life more.