My NOT to do list

Does your To Do List haunt you? Are there single items on your list that never go away? Maybe you don't even write it down anymore, you know it is there, sticking its tongue out at you.

My home office is a complete disaster area. It also serves as my closet, junk room and bio-hazard waste collection facility. I am not proud of this. I keep the door shut. I redeem myself by saying that it is on the top of my To Do List. The actual task on the list reads something like "Redo office". In my mind's eye I convert it into the perfect multi-functioning work space for me and my stuff, decorated by a professional designer with built in closets, a fabulous and spartan desk, the breeze making it's way through the sheer curtains billowing behind me as I prep for work or pay my bills. Is that lavender in the air?

I'm taking this off my To Do List. I beat myself up everyday about this complete and utter failure of mine. Instead, I am writing "Clean My Room" on my To Do List and "Renovate/redecorate/transform home office" now moves to the tippy top of my Not To Do List. I just can't take the pressure. We need to be realistic.

Would you feel relieved by taking one or two items off your To Do List? Are you really going to get to them anytime before the paper the list is on begins decomposing? Maybe you have a project at work that you want to get to when things slow down. Ha! Take it off the Good Girl To Do List and plant it where it belongs: the Not To Do List. Maybe you would be more comfortable with my Not To Do NOW List or perhaps my To Do Later List?

I'm looking at it this way, I have eliminated a distraction from getting my more important things done. We will all be more productive if we stay free of the quicksand of unrealistic chore lists.

Please feel free to use some of my Not To Do List items:

1. Organize an end of year class party for my daughter
2. Write a book this year
3. Organize all family photos and mementos into beautiful scrapbooks
4. Create a mission statement
5. Handwrite and send at least 10 thank you notes each week
6. Call distant relatives just to check in
7. Become a vegetarian
8. Become an athletic woman
9. Face up to the junk under my bed.
10. Run for political office
11. There's more, of course, but I have things that I DO have to do.