To Do List
what I couldn't fit on the post-it note attached to my fridge
The knob on the finger closest to my right pinky is starting to grow — a small but telling sign that my pen has been working overtime. The Post‑it note beneath it is a helpless victim of my scribbles, rewrites, and aggressive strike‑throughs. Every morning I write a fresh to‑do list, and throughout the day I edit it: crossing things off, rearranging priorities, adding new tasks, modifying old ones. Mostly it’s work‑related, but the occasional “buy groceries” or “Target run for candles” sneaks in.
To‑do lists are supposed to provide structure, but for someone like me, they become an obsession. I probably spend more time rewriting the damn thing so it looks neat and aesthetically pleasing than I do completing the tasks themselves.
This habit has revealed a few things about myself — things I hadn’t noticed before. The first is how easily I can reprioritize the list to fit my environment, my goals, or my energy level… yet I struggle to do the same with my actual life goals. Why is it that I can rewrite a task three times in a day, but I can’t seem to strike through “Move to New York,” a goal that’s been on my list for ten years? I want it — badly. The city has always felt like the place where the version of me I imagine actually exists. And yet, instead of motivating me, the goal just sits there, taunting me every time I look at it.
The second thing I’ve noticed is how obsessed I am with making the list look a certain way. Perfect handwriting, cute colors, clean organization — if it’s not something I’d be proud to show someone else, it gets trashed. It’s a small habit, but it reflects something bigger: how much emphasis I put on my appearance, especially how I appear to others. I curate even my private chaos.
Now that I’ve self‑identified and self‑diagnosed these tendencies, it feels like time to self‑prescribe. My first thought is to simply post a picture of my current to‑do list — the personal one, of course; I’m not trying to get fired — and let it exist publicly in all its messy, unedited glory. No color coding, no rewriting, no aesthetic curation. Just the raw list of things I need to do.
Maybe the real challenge isn’t completing the tasks, but letting them be imperfect while I work toward them. And maybe, someday, I’ll get to share a version of that same list with every item finally struck through — including the one that’s been haunting me for a decade.
Until then, the callus on my finger will keep growing, a tiny physical reminder that change starts with writing things down… and eventually, acting on them.