The Stress Of Making A List
Jul 25th, 2008 by zania
How Not To Get Organised!
I 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 keeping to it would necessarily lead to stress.
The more I think about this, the more I see stress caused by not actually making the darn list in the first place!
I’ll tell you why. I desperately need to make a list to organise my life as a professional blogger. But I am having trouble making it!
My last post on Fraying Edges Depression Help, about unforeseen effects of Prozac, produced several thousand new visitors. The post before that, about how writing blogs about depression can be isolating, received several hundred hits also. It is always nice to receive visitors and I hope at least a few of you stayed around to read more. It was even nicer to receive some great comments. Thank you! 
In the beginning, I had not intended Fraying Edges Depression Help to be my main blog. It was going to be the place where I would to talk about depression, anxiety, my anorexia , and other things which got me down. And I wrote some pages on depression and anxiety (and hope to add more soon, particularly on slimming diseases). These were not only to provide information for depression sufferers, but also to be a place where I could look to find something I may have forgotten about.
But Fraying Edges is becoming an important part of my blogging home.
The people who comment on this depression blog are real people with real concerns, many of whom suffer from depression and anxiety themselves. They deserve better than a quick ‘thank you’ note from me, and a once-in-a-while post. They also deserve a visit to their own blogs and, in any case, I like to do this. I like reading about how others cope with depression. It puts depressive illness into perspective from another’s point of view and sometimes gives me coping ideas I may not have come up with myself.
But I need to organise my life so that I have more time to do this.
I work as a freelance writer as well as a professional blogger. Together with writing work for clients, along with Fraying Edges, I have another eight main blogs and lots of other smaller blogs.
The writing and the main blogs (including this one) take up most of my time (most of the others are ‘on auto’ one way or another, but require daily maintenance). So they are all important to me, for one reason or another. I cannot let any one of them slide.
This is causing me a little stress…
I need to make a list.
I need that list to help me organise my time between my writing work, my main blogs and the other little blogs (which actually make more money for me than anything else).
So, the list has to be divided between:
The things I enjoy doing: writing articles for clients; writing posts; responding to comments; communicating on other blogs and forums; trying to help people on occasion…
And the things I do not enjoy: the drudge of building and maintaining my smaller blogs; responding to emails; networking and promotion; having to alter my work to cover clients new demands; chasing up clients…
And somehow, I have to work these out between the things which make me feel good and the tasks which make me money (and notice the change of terminology there…). Because, without money, my family is all put under undue stress.
Just thinking about sorting out a coherent list for that lot puts me under stress!
But I have to agree with Normal Joe, who recently wrote Three Reasons Why Multitasking Sucks For You. I do need to organise my time, so that I not only get the most important things done first, but get them done one at a time. I know this would make me more productive and not stress me out half as much.
However, for me to do that, I have to see those plans in print. I have to get down to making that list.
Oh, the stress of it all! 
Hey Zania, awesome post! You already know how I feel about this, I think I have something that may help you out, send me your email address and I’ll hook it up. Also, don’t forget about simpleology, I really think you’ll love it!
look forward to hearing from you!
Thanks JK (again, lol!)
Ok, I’ll send you my email address (although it should be on your list already, I think…).
simpleology… ? I’m googling it right now and I’ve found Mark Joyner. Hmmm…..
I have to tell you that I take an awful lot of convincing. Stay tuned on that one!
I understand! Trust me…I think you’ll like it…it’s free! And it’s been helping me out, I found it as I was on my “time management” journey!
Anyway….I probably do have your email…lol
Still reading… lol!
Hi! I thought I’d drop in and let you know that I have my RSS feed up and running now, and I’ve also changed the look of my blog (although not that much!)
I think you’re doing a fantastic thing with this blog. Writing about depression can’t be easy but there are so many people it helps.
As for lists, I’m a list cheater! I write lists that include lots of easy little things that I would remember with or without the list, just for the pleasure of crossing them off. I also add things after I’ve done them, again so I can cross them off. But there’s nothing more satisfying than a long list entirely ticked off at the end of day! Sometimes I just sit and look at it!
Hi Jenny,
thanks for letting me know about your RSS feed. It does make a difference when you can sign up for a blog’s feed - to me anyhow, it acts as a reminder that the blog is there.
I’ll be over later to check out the changes
Yes, sometimes it’s hard writing about depression, especially when you suffer from it yourself, as I do. It can get a little personal at times. Most good bloggers talk from the heart to their readers, as you do, but sometimes with depression, you can feel you are stripping your thoughts naked for others’ inspection.
But it helps me and I hope it helps others too.
You really love lists, don’t you?
Actually, that’s a good tip - about writing lists with easy things on - yes, I can see it would give you real satisfaction knowing you’ve completed all those task.
Nice one, thanks!
>The more I think about this, the more I see stress >caused by not actually making the darn list in the first >place!
No worries though.
Didn’t I warn you about this in my comment on that page? Too much stuff floating in the head makes Andy’s brain a cuisinart.
With all those hits you mentioned, was that the “stumble” effect? I noticed your site and that page is listed on Stumbleupon.com. I got a few extra myself, around 200 on one page in under a few minutes, but no comments or clicks on external links. Seems like they stumbled by but I couldn’t grab their attention.
That ‘Stumble Effect’ was a little bizarre
I’ve had thousands of hits before on a blog, but not so many and in such a short space of time. I was getting quite worried about my hosting resources. I’ve got plenty of bandwidth, but resources, that’s a whole other thing…
The exhilaration of just sitting and watching those hits pour in is a kind of high (it was for me, anyway…), but then I began to think about the possible outcome…
Guess I just get stressed too darned easy!
I had a few clicks to external pages and sites, but not that many, as is the way with Stumble visitors it seems… Although, thinking about it, quite a few stayed around for a while, which was nice
So, nothing to get stressed out about really.
I’m working on that list by the way, but it’s going kinda slow…
[...] I wrote my post about The Stress Of Making A List, I was bemoaning the fact that I cannot even begin to get my life [...]
Oh lists, lists, how I freaking love and hate lists!!! I guess I draw the line at the fact that I only write/keep lists for these functions:
-To clean out short term memory. My work requires me to think on my feet and make snap decisions frequently. By keeping the old RAM clean, so to speak, I make better decisions with less stress.
-To organize my thoughts when I get “creative overload”, often when I read a good book.
-Any other time where the time spent writing and maintaining the list is not greater then the time saved.
David Allen of “Getting things done” advocates keeping lots and lots of lists, but he also advocates spending the least amount of time writing and maintaining them (i.e. the sticky pad and crumbled piece of paper in your pocket system). Several of his devotee’s created a whole system called the “hipster pda” at DIYplanner.com.
When it comes to work based list keeping, Tim Ferriss of “4 hour work week” fame is similar to me in that he only thinks you should keep lists if it improves your productivity. But he takes it a step further and asks us to look at the stuff on our lists and explore our motivation for wanting to do so much shit. This has brought my the most success, the last several weeks I’ve started letting things go and caring a little less, and I feel great about it. Being a detailed control-freak (only at work albeit), created undo stress for me. My attitude was the bars of my prison. When I realized that and removed myself as an obstacle, then I was able to escape from my personal prison.
One other note, don’t let the myriad of geeky internet list-o-holics make you feel guilty for not being that way. Some of us can thrive in a listless system. If you’ve always been this way, then maybe that is just the kind of person you are. Albert Einstein always kept a messy desk and hardly ever kept lists!!
Hey Brian,
maybe I have something in common with Albert Einstein after all!!
I have tried out most of the geek stuff on the net at one time or another. (if you see my post on simpleology you will see me bemoaning the fact that the system has been ´geeked´ which prevented me from viewing it for a while).
Yes, I heard of that advice by Tim Ferries, but it´s the only one I haven´t looked at for some reason. The common sense approach. I like that!
´Some of us can thrive in a listless system´
hmmm does that make us feel listless…?