My Do List Thinks It’s My Manager
I retired from the workforce. I did not agree to report to a sticky note.
Oh, the do list.
Let’s talk about the tiny tyrant that lives on your kitchen counter.
Mine sits there like it pays rent.
It wakes up before I do.
I shuffle in for coffee and it’s already judging me.
“Did you walk?”
“Did you send that email?”
“Did you reorganize the garage like a woman who has her life together?”
Meanwhile I haven’t even found my glasses.
There was a time when my do list made me feel important. Productive. Relevant. Retired but still contributing to the Gross Domestic Output of My Own Ego.
Look at me.
Crossing things off.
Moving the world forward.
One load of laundry at a time.
But lately I’ve noticed something.
If I don’t write a list, I feel slightly… unmoored.
Like who even am I today if I don’t have three errands and a mildly impressive domestic achievement?
Apparently my identity has been moonlighting as a project manager.
And here’s where it gets funny.
Half the things on the list?
I invented them.
No one asked me to deep clean the spice drawer.
No one is monitoring my linen closet.
There is no international committee reviewing my Tuesday output.
And yet there I am, hustling for gold stars from an invisible authority.
At 70.
From a piece of paper.
The do list is sneaky like that.
It tells you it’s about productivity.
But sometimes it’s about proof.
Proof you still matter.
Proof you’re still useful.
Proof you haven’t drifted into irrelevance.
But what if your worth isn’t a bullet point?
What if the most radical thing you could do on a Tuesday is sit in the sun with your coffee and not earn it first?
What if baking bread counts.
What if reading counts.
What if staring out the window counts.
Or what if nothing needs to count.
I’m not anti-list.
I love a good grocery reminder.
I enjoy not forgetting to pay the electric bill.
But I am deeply suspicious of anything that makes me feel like I have to perform to exist.
Especially at this stage of life.
So now when my list starts acting like my supervisor, I look at it and say,
“You work for me.”
Some days I still obey it.
Some days I crumple it.
Some days I rewrite it with only one item:
Live like I’m already enough.
That one is surprisingly hard to cross off.
f you’re tired of reporting to your own to-do list…
If you’re ready to live from something deeper than obligation and busywork…
That’s exactly why the Monirose Soul Circle exists.
It’s not about productivity.
It’s about coherence.
It’s about building a life that feels like it belongs to you again.
Right now, you can join as an annual member at 20% off — and I’ll include the Breakthrough guide so you have a tangible place to start untangling what’s yours and what never was.
Not more tasks.
Real recalibration.
If that sounds like relief, come in.
We’re not here to impress the list.
We’re here to outgrow it.
I use an app called Todoist that, once, ordered my working life and its varied demands. It now has a series of categories, some of which do remain reminders of what needs to get done so that my scattered brain will remember to do them - appointments, connections, and, yes, chores - but most of which are pleasures I get to choose from each day, the list reminding me of the things I love, the people I want to stay in touch with, the places I still love to meander, the creative processes that set my heart in a calm and steady rhythm. It's a delight to make that list each morning and wander in and out of its offerings throughout the day, at the end of which it matters not at all if I have completed it.
I do have to-do lists for my moving parts, and it does make me feel guilty when I don’t get things done, but I have so many loose ends that I need to tie up, because I’m in the building stages of art for selling. It makes me feel even worse when I procrastinate. But if I don’t have the lists, I’m lost.
I may be retired from working the 40-hour week for money, but not from the business of selling art.
Any thoughts on this?