List Making, Procrastination and Stress
Jul 13th, 2008 by zania
As you can imagine, after making my previous post, my thoughts are still preocupied. Nevertheless, Fraying Edges Depression Help is very important to me, because, not only does it help me deal with my personal depression, it may, in a small way, help others cope with depression too.
And as I think I have said before, blogging our thoughts can sometimes help us deal with depression. It can also help us deal with everyday stress.
But sometimes it is hard to blog. Not only at sad times, but also when we just can’t get down to it. And then, if you are like me, you can procrastinate a lot. Which brings me to the point of today’s post on List Making, Procrastination and Stress.
I read somewhere (and I really can’t remember where) the idea that making a list is not only a form of procrastination, but it can actually be harmful for our emotional health.
The idea stated was that, in making a list but not completing it, we have highlighted tasks we need to do and have thus put them at the top of our minds. When we fail to complete them, we are giving ourselves even more stress than we had already when we had only a vague idea of what needed to be done. Because now we have made them real.
But does making a list and not completing it really mean that you have all these things still on your mind? If we do not complete the things on that list is it going to cause us stress?
Or does it mean that, because you have made that list you have taken those things off your mind?
In other words, if we make a list and then throw it away (or simply let it gather fluff in a corner somewhere), are we not saying that the things on the list are not as important as we once thought and that making the list was all we really needed to do?
I can understand the concept of list making being procrastination. I have made endless lists instead of actually carrying out the tasks listed on them. However, as someone who has a butterfly mind which tends to flit from one idea to the next with scary rapidity, I need those lists to focus my thoughts. And that’s a good thing, because, without that focus, I would never get anything done and then I would get really stressed!.
So for me the jury is still out on the list making equals procrastination equals stress debate.
I’ll just add it to the list to think about some other time 
I think it’s fine to make a list. Maybe some people don’t need to, or maybe it works better for some than others. I think it causes more stress to try to consciously and unconsciously remember everything you need to do. Once you write things into a list, you know you can forget about that item, and it frees up your mind a little bit. You don’t have to worry about forgetting it anymore, you can focus on other stuff a little bit better.
That´s just how feel Andy.
I have so much trouble trying to contain my thoughts without writing them down somewhere.
I tried all those ´to do´lists you can join or download, but that makes it worse, because I now have another list in my bookmarks so that I can find them and add to my lists!
Much better to write it all down on a scrap of paper and throw it away!
I can see where people could get stressed with all this list making, but it´s the only way that works for me… sort of!
[...] wrote about my feelings on Procrastination a few posts ago. Then I stated that I really didn’t believe that making a list and not [...]