Wandering Outside of My To-Do Lists

I make daily to-do lists. I write my list on a little pad after breakfast each morning, and it serves as a guide for the day. Activities are listed with approximate times, and include errands, like going to the bank, and social plans, like meeting a friend for lunch. Some activities, like writing and going to the gym, may appear several times each week. When I complete a task I check it off, and feel a sense of accomplishment.

When I was working full-time, with a family to take care of, the to-do lists for work and home were all activities I saw as necessary and they took up the entire day. I had to stay goal-focused as I turned to do each task on the list. At the end of most days, I felt I had a busy, satisfying day, and was usually exhausted when I went to bed.

In retirement, I still have obligations and errands I need to do. Since I have more discretionary time, I can do more things that bring me pleasure, like reading and visiting museums. But making my list each day and checking off the  items completed has started feeling insufficient and unsatisfying. There is a downside to making these lists. While they still provide me with concrete plans and goals for the day, they feel confining.

I have decided that in addition to the items I put on my list, there is another category of experiences and activities that I now seek. These are items that don’t show up on my daily to-do lists. In the early years of my retirement the lists gave me a guide and comfort, and the sense of still being busy. Surrounded by achievement-oriented family members and peers throughout my life, being busy had become a goal in itself, a measure of success.  But after several years of doing that, I plan to change the work-based model I have used. Since I have more discretionary time, simply focusing on getting the tasks listed for the day done doesn’t have to be my only goal.

I’m not referring to planning new things, like taking a trip or starting a new hobby. Those are possible too. But some unplanned, unpredictable experiences can emerge from taking advantage of the activities on my list I am already doing, and recognizing the opportunities they can provide. I did it when I was heading home from an errand and stopped to watch a young girl give money to a beggar – this led to an insight about kindness, and an essay I enjoyed writing. And I now often do it by exploring topics on the internet that are tangential to a specific question I was looking up.  This often takes me to entirely hew subject areas.

There are several expressions for what I am referring to, including “being present” for what is going on around me, and “living outside of the box.” Both connote a willingness to go beyond what I have usually done. My old idea, that waking up in the morning and knowing how I would be busy all day was the measure of a fulfilling life, is no longer what I need to live by.

I plan to continue making my daily lists but will also leave time for changing activities when something else, perhaps totally different from what I had planned, comes up. I think that simply having that as a mindset will lead to new experiences and pleasures.  I look forward to wandering outside of my to-do lists.