Making a List to Not Make a List

Even before the new year ushers in it’s the time for omnipresent lists- best this, top ten that , worst evers and the like. The phenomenon continues with the list of personal resolutions- no more this, much more of that. Makes me wonder if we are becoming a prisoner of lists and ‘To Dos’? Has it become imperative for our sanity to check off items continually – in worst case checking them off mentally for every chore accomplished!

I was struck by an interesting idea shared in one of my classes- ‘Functional Autonomy’ (Gordon Allport). It suggests that motives behind our behavior are independent of their origins- why I eat 3 meals a day, became an engineer or sleep for eight hours every day has little relation to the reason of its origin. It becomes a part of me- I continue to operate in auto mode. Although somewhat extreme, the idea sounds relevant in the light of many tasks in our every day life that have extinguished their original purpose. We still do them ‘just because’. And we tick them off our list without reflecting on why they are on the list.

At the other end of the continuum, everything becomes a purpose. I read so that I can write, I eat so that I can work out, I sleep so that I am energized to function at my full potential the next day! All activities become mini goals that give you an ephemeral kick when you check them off your mental list. In addition to being very exhausting this has its own vicious cycle of reinforcement. As you become better with each task, appreciation from others makes you want to jam in more in those 24 hours- you talk on the phone when you walk, you eat when you study and you solve problems in your head when you are running. Life soon becomes one big ‘To Do’.

I was frantically writing about ‘leadership and learning’ to meet a self-imposed deadline for a paper when the news about Mumbai attacks jolted me out of my surreal world. As I witnessed days of madness and suffering I asked myself many times if what I do every day with a passion that makes it feel life and death to me, can in any way make any difference to the tragedy that was occurring- or sadly to any issue in the world? The answer still disappoints me.

Before we ‘should’ ourselves even more or operate like human automatons I offer you a new to do for the new year- checking against your individual higher purpose when it comes to your broad life goals while being ‘in the moment’ for every day activities. So next time I bite into a scrumptious apple I am doing that to enjoy its taste and not to give me energy to run an extra mile. And next time I mold a research question to explore I check if what I find will make a difference to any of the inexplicable craziness in the world. Put that into your ‘to do’ so that you can scratch everything else off!