Slow order
How to ditch your to-do list, skip the stress and still get your house organized
It’s the Season of Feeling Bad About Yourself. I know this because stores’ holiday decorations, which had been spreading cheer and parasitic glitter specks since October, have given way to different seasonally appropriate displays, like racks of athletic shoes (hey, what happened to those cozy slippers?!) and self-help books (should you ignite your life, stop denying your greatness, or jump on the Swedish death cleaning bandwagon?). As is my annual custom, I reject the selfhelp of others. Instead, I make a to-do list.
If you, too, follow the hallowed tradition of the New Year’s to-do list, I salute you in the spirit of this season. Because, basically, there is no quicker path to the heart of despair than that little yellow Post-it full of Big Things we need to get done. Much of my list is taken up by things I have to do around the house, in an attempt to restore order or tackle lingering issues during the winter shut-in season. The list decorates my desk or kitchen counter all season long, cheerfully taunting me about all that I am not getting done as I race past on the way to do something else.
As celebratory as all this sounds, I’m willing to admit that there might be a better way. Which is why I called up Stephanie Sarkis, a psychologist and author who has written about the Zeigarnik effect. Named after a Soviet psychologist who got inspired while in a cafe (she was intrigued by her waiter’s ability to remember a long list of orders), the Zeigarnik effect notes that unfinished tasks are like an itch that our brains can’t scratch.
“Our brains need closure,” says Sarkis. “We need to wrap things up — we crave completion.” Thus, the anxiety that sets in when we realize that we still haven’t crossed “Clean out the closet” off our lists.
As any self-help book worth its future spot on the Salvation Army shelves will tell you, we’re simply doing it wrong. When it comes to the to-do list, we need to learn to think small. “Big goals are stressful for the brain,” says Sarkis. “It’s much less stress for the brain if you give it a small task with a reward than if you give it a big task.”
In other words, you can ditch those big-ticket to-do lists. Quick, before they clog up your completion-craving brain. “If you’re a goal-driven person,” Sarkis says, “it’s kind of a paradigm shift.”
Stay with us here: We’re not saying you can’t have goals. The trick is to break those goals down, into bite-size, specific tasks. Goals sliced as thin as a low-cal, yet surprisingly satisfying, potato chip.
“Every time you finish a task,” says Sarkis, “you get a little dose of dopamine, and then your brain is like, ‘OK, great, that felt good. Let’s do that again.’ And you actually get a lot more stuff accomplished.” Like cleaning up the closet.
Household tasks, luckily, are amazingly well-suited to this despair-beating, radically lackadaisical path to getting things done. Here’s how it works on a few of those common to-do list tasks. empty bag An
Get a paper grocery bag, and set it on the floor of your closet. While you’re getting dressed, grab that blouse that makes you feel ugly or that toosmall pair of pants leering at you judgmentally — grab any offending item — and drop it in the bag. Then walk away. When the bag is full, take it to your car or the garage, on its way to be donated. Stop to enjoy the micro-dose of dopamine coursing through your brain. Get another empty bag, and repeat. Do not waste brain power thinking about cleaning up your closet. Do not tell people you are cleaning out your closet. Do not write “clean closet” on a Post-it. One day soon, you will look up and discover … your closet is cleaned out. (Insert dopamine here.)
A kit (any bag or small container) with a set of self-adhesive felt furniture pads and wood-scratch repair markers in a color to match your floor
Place your kit within easy reach (maybe in the hall closet). When you have a few minutes to spare (maybe while waiting for coffee to brew or while talking on the phone), stick felt on furniture feet. (Prevent new scratches before you fix old ones.) Only spend a few minutes empty box An
Using the same gradual method as in the closet cleanout, discard those kitchen utensils that you really don’t use, are broken or that you have duplicates of. (That set of Ginsu knives just isn’t as sharp as it used to be.)