grown-up, adult person, and yet I’m still struggling with the most basic things—like figuring out how to manage my time?
“I always have so much to do. I never have enough time for everything. I feel like I’m drowning,” she finished bluntly, tears gushing from her eyes.
And so, here was Olivia’s predicament. A familiar dilemma, painfully relatable for me, and for so many people. Too much to do. Not enough hours in the day. Competing priorities. Overwhelm. Fried nerves.
New Year’s Eve was forty-eight hours away. But rather than feeling optimistic about the year ahead, Olivia already felt exhausted and anxious about everything that needed to be done. And the year hadn’t even begun.
“You’ve got a lot on your plate—and a lot on your mind,” I said. “It’s totally understandable that you feel overwhelmed.”
I hate seeing my sister (or anyone, really) in pain. I wish I could wave a magic wand and instantly erase all of my sister’s worries and struggles. I couldn’t offer a magic wand—but I could offer something else. Something to create a little more calm amidst the mental chaos.
“Do you want to try something with me?” I asked.
“What?” she sniffled.
“Let’s make a checklist.”
From mental chaos back to calm.
I gave Olivia a hug. We made a pot of ginger tea with honey. I brought out some big sheets of paper, Sharpie markers, bulletin boards, and brass tacks. We sat cross-legged and hashed it all out.
We started with some basic questions:
•What are your biggest priorities for the next season?
•What are your tiny goals for today? Tomorrow? The next day?
•Okay, how many of those goals can you realistically complete in a single day, while still leaving space for showering, eating, sleeping—you know, basic human-body maintenance?
•Have you been over-extending yourself, tying to cram an unreasonable number of activities into each day?
•If so, how could we scale things back to a more humane, manageable level?
About an hour later, we had distilled the maelstrom in her mind into a couple of neat, orderly checklists.
First, a Seasonal Checklist. A checklist of her biggest priorities for the next three months. The big things she wanted to accomplish and experience over the next ninety days.
Second, a Loose-End Checklist. A checklist of all the random, miscellaneous loose ends that she wanted to tie up. Little bits and bobs that had been floating around in her mind like old pennies, gum wrappers, and lint at the bottom of a backpack, creating that uneasy “I know I must be forgetting something…” feeling.
Third, a Daily Checklist. A checklist for tomorrow—not the whole week, just the next day—so she could get a good night’s sleep, wake up refreshed, and have a clear plan for the day ahead—already printed and laid out in advance.
Her tears dried. Her shoulders dropped out of her ears. The storm clouds seemed to be parting.
“Feel better?” I asked.
She did.
Significantly better.
All because of one hour of talking and planning, a few sheets of paper, a pen. Nothing flashy or complicated. Just making a few lists, which is something that most people instinctively know how to do.
I could see the glow of hope returning to Olivia’s eyes. She still had a very demanding year ahead—no doubt—but after one hour of checklist-making, she seemed at least 20 percent more confident in her abilities to handle things successfully. Sometimes, 20 percent makes all the difference in the world.
This is why I love checklists—and why I felt inspired to write an entire book about them.
How checklists have changed my life.
For most of my life—practically as long as I can remember—I’ve used checklists to organize my life. From the moment I could hold a pencil in my hands and write, I’ve been making lists and checking them off.
I was very young when I first experienced the oh-so-satisfying sensation of putting a big, fat checkmark next to a completed item. Even as I type that word—checkmark—I feel an involuntary sigh, a feeling of sweet release, an almost erotic thrill (hahahaaaaa—oh, but it’s true) cascading through my body. Ahhhh. The glorious checkmark. The powerful symbol of an intention that’s been set—and realized. A goal—achieved. A victory—won. Visible evidence of progress—made.
I love checklists with a fervor that delights some and frightens others. As Brenda, my editor at Mango Publishing, once put it, “Alex, once you start talking about checklists, you get this…um…gleam in your eyes.”
I think “gleam” is a euphemism for “evangelistic, manic zeal.”
Brenda is right. Once you get me talking about checklists, the gleam arises, and it’s difficult for me to stop—because checklists have shaped my life in so many beautiful ways. I just want to spread the Checklist Gospel to anyone who’s willing to listen.
Checklists have helped me to navigate several complex, long-distance moves—from Los Angeles to New Zealand, New Zealand to Minnesota, Minnesota to Oregon, and Oregon to Hawaii.
Checklists have made it possible for me to complete numerous professional projects with tight deadlines, even tighter budgets, and lots of moving parts—including producing events in more than twenty cities around the world, writing several books (and securing book deals), writing hundreds of articles and essays, working behind-the-scenes as a writer, editor, consultant, and content creator for my clients, launching my own website, business, and podcast, and years later, launching a book publishing imprint called The Tiny Press.
But the biggest reason why I love checklists—and why I felt compelled to write this book—is because checklists have helped me to strike a much healthier balance between “work” and “the rest of my life.”
By making checklists, I’m able to plan my day more thoughtfully and direct my time more effectively. Armed with a simple, neat, one-page list for the day, I find it’s much easier to make time for my loved ones, time for my health, time for connecting with nature, time for the experiences that really matter to me—experiences that have nothing to do with invoices, spreadsheets, or emails.
When I think back through the years of my life, my most precious, treasured moments include spontaneously booking a plane ticket to surprise my dad on Father’s Day. (I will never forget the look on his face.) Snuggling in bed with my mom and rubbing her feet while we watched British TV dramas in the middle of the afternoon just because we felt like it. Making Swedish meatballs on Christmas Eve with my brother and his wife. Braiding my sister’s long, dark hair while she played Dixie Chicks songs on the guitar. Driving around in my old, scuffed up baby blue Volkswagen Beetle convertible with the top rolled down and my friend Kate playing DJ. Grieving a life-shattering breakup with the man I thought was my forever-mate, sobbing, staring at the ocean, asking God for a sign, and then—as if on cue, a cosmic wink—a humpback whale leaping from the depths of the sea.
On
