These last few weeks, I have been trying to get into a routine in which I actually track which things have been on my perpetual to-do list and then stop avoiding them and do them. Part of this means that I have been rethinking the extremely specific, incredibly hyperlinked, planner I have been using for the last year and a half, which--I need to note--has been one of the least productive 1.5 years of my life, as judged by most internal and external productivity measures.

 

Now everything should not be judged by productivity, but at some point, one must simply look at a productivity tool and say: well, that's obviously not functioning as intended. I am easily distracted by frippery and furbelows, but it turns out that it does not matter if I have a perfectly organized list if I then ignore it and/or use it to remind me of all the things I could be doing but maybe not right then, or make a giant list of all the huge things that are not yet done and then have a massive panic attack about it.

 

So I am trying a different kind of planning right now. It utilizes a very highly specialized system: a blank sheet of paper. (This is not the time to tell me about bullet journals. I used bullet journals for years, and in fact use a modified version of them for, um, everything.)

 

At the top, I write “task dump.” Then I write down all the things I can think of that I need to do with no prioritization. Then I think about which of those things I have to do on that day.

 

Then--and this is important--I have a cup of tea and I don't think about my tasks at all. I have tea. On the day I took this picture, I had a tea out of the tea advent calendar I got from Sazen. This was an excellent tea: delicate, sweet, with a fruity overtone.

 

A really good white tea reminds me a little of a Riesling, which is one of the wines I will risk drinking in very small quantities, even though it causes me Distress. There's an inherent sweetness to it, but it's a little bit dry. There's a hint of floral flavor. The flavor is crisp, like a spring day.

 

This was an excellent tea, and I went through three steeps of it.

 

It turns out that ignoring the task list for about twenty minutes is important for productivity. You see, the very act of making it causes a full-body inflammatory response in me, as if I'm being reminded of all my many failures and things I forgot and notices that I shoved in my desk and oh god, that's probably overdue and maybe if I don't look--

 

Anyway, I have tea to manage the hyperventilation, because that, it turns out, is not conducive to getting things done.

 

Then I ask myself not which task I want to do, or what task other people want me to do. I ask myself which of the things I will feel best having done at the end of the day. And then I label those things: 1, 2, 3, 4. I don't label more than 4.

 

This is my new tea planner, and it's working.

I got this version of Baihao Yinzhen from Sazen Tea, but the tea is also known as “silver needles” and you can get it from many places that probably have less shipping to do, and perhaps already have US tariffs paid on it.

One of the things I haven't talked about in this newsletter, despite it being a huge part of my life, is that over the last few years, I have been assailed by feelings of total inadequacy both as a person and as a writer. I haven't talked about this, because when I talk about this, people tend to want to reassure me that I am not inadequate, and this always makes me feel worse, and then I have to take more time to reassure the people who are trying to reassure me even though I now feel even worse than I did before I started.

 

It's a terrible cycle and I try to avoid it as much as possible. 

 

But I have been trying to deal with it. I have been trying to be gentle and loving with myself: where is this coming from? Is this rational? What do I tell the part of myself that fears this? What do I need to feel secure?

 

This has not helped. It has in fact made the panic and fear and feelings of gross inadequacy worse, a thing I did not really grapple with until about a week and a half ago. It has disrupted a lot of things in my life and it is very annoying and I have been trying so hard not to be annoyed with myself that perhaps I forgot to realize that maybe I should be annoyed, because this is annoying.

 

One must stop and look at all tools and ask oneself: is this working for purpose? And if not, should I continue to do it? Anyway, I had the realization that perhaps I am not being gentle with myself by letting my worst thoughts about myself play out on a regular basis. Maybe I am just building those thoughts a home and giving them a warm bed, and maybe I don't need to do that.

 

So I switched to a different tactic, which is that when I have those feelings, I say, “fuck that, I'm awesome” and then I move on. This has been shockingly effective, and I'm mad I didn't think of it before.

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