Obtaining Peace of Mind with a Not To Do List

Everyone has heard of a “To Do List” but almost no one has heard of a “Not To Do List” so what is a “Not to Do List”?

For most of you, it’s actually your “To Do List”. Lists are storage units of mental shit you keep shuffling around. If you had honestly thought something was important enough to do you’d do it, but what tends to happen is you make a list of stuff that you’d like to do or know you should do and you agonizingly make your way through the list while hardly doing anything.

The list for most becomes a maybe I’ll do this list but probably not. As the list gets larger you just start crossing stuff off, “no reason to do that anymore”. But the catch to it is, if you don’t make a list then you re-remember stuff which makes for a non-peaceful and frustrated person.

This leads you to remind people to tell you to do things but usually you only tell someone else to remind you after you’ve re-remembered that thing for the third time. If you don’t like remembering stuff you’re supposed to do, what makes you think someone else, regardless of how significant they are, gives a shit about stuff you have to do. If you’re lucky they’ll write it down for you, but cut out the middle man and write it down yourself.

So the key to being peaceful and clearing your mind is to be honest with yourself. You can do this by making a list of shit you’re probably not ever going to do. Take this list and write stuff down on it, you’ll find the simple act of writing something down causes it to fall from your mind and you’ll stop re-remembering stuff and you’ll just remember to check the list of shit you’re not really going to do occasionally, more for laughter than anything else. You can get together with friends on this system and compare you’re shit you didn’t do lists and laugh about it, it might look something like this:

• Get a new job
• Take dog for a walk
• Return borrowed item to friend
• Read a book
• etc

If you’d like to turn this into a system, go ahead and make 3 lists. One for things you’re actually going to do or must do, one for things you might do, and one for things you’re probably not going to do. There’s no reason to have one list that has everything on it because you’ll skim over stuff you might do and probably aren’t going to do as you make your way through the list. If you’re like most people, you’ll end up with a few things crossed off the list then you’ll add more stuff to the list when you already have 20 things and do those instead of everything else.

What I prefer to do is just make one list of things I’m probably never going to do and then I go about my day doing all the things that are important in the moment. Sometimes referencing the list you realize you should probably do some of the things on the list so occasionally you do it that day and cross it off, but it’s rare.

Try this out, you’ll feel so much better knowing that a list contains all the insignificant bullshit you were never going to do and you won’t even check it much, just knowing there is a list is usually enough to calm the mind.