Читать книгу The Checklist Book - Alexandra Franzen - Страница 14

It was two days before the beginning of a brand new year. I came home from the grocery store to find my beautiful, brilliant sister…sobbing and clutching fistfuls of tissue, huddled in a damp snot-puddle on the floor.

Olivia, my younger sibling, was twenty-seven years old at the time. I found her slumped in my living room with her suitcase open, belongings strewn all around, staring down at the carpeting.

She’d been visiting for the winter holidays and spent the last few weeks with me. I was excited to have her in town and eager to show her my new life in Hilo—a small, quirky, coastal city in Hawaii where I’d moved just a few months prior.

For the last fourteen days, I’d proudly presented the pineapples growing in my backyard, my favorite swimming hole, the best ahi poke on the planet, a majestic green sand beach. I took Olivia hither and yon, down red dirt roads, through jungle trails, all over the island, determined to give her the best vacation of all time. (And, you know, hopefully earn the official title of Coolest Big Sister Ever.)

Olivia was sweet and affectionate as always, linking her arm with mine as we walked and talked, laughing when I told our favorite inside-jokes (“Crack a window!” “Welcome to paperclip village!”). And yet, at many points during her visit, an invisible cloud seemed to hang over my sister’s head. She seemed somewhat distant, distracted, and tightly wound. She’d get strangely agitated over tiny mistakes that wouldn’t ordinarily bother her in the slightest—like accidentally tossing a hand-wash-only top into the machine.

I didn’t pry for information, but I could sense that my sister was tense and preoccupied for some reason—perhaps many reasons. A heavy load of emotional weight rested on her shoulders.

I know that feeling all too well.

Even when your physical body is in paradise—rainbows, sunshine, coconuts, and palm trees all around—your mind can be one thousand miles away, ruminating on difficult, worrisome things.

Finally, on the last day of her visit, as she was packing up for her flight back home, everything came bubbling to the surface. Like the Kilauea Volcano that had erupted earlier that same year—spewing up thick, viscous lava—my sister’s troubles poured out.

“I just…” Olivia burbled, amidst tears. “I just…feel so overwhelmed.”

“About what?” I asked, setting down the groceries and coming to her side.

“EVERYTHING,” she moaned.

I flopped onto the floor beside her.

“Okay,” I said. “What kind of ‘everything’? Do you want to talk about it?”

She did.

What Olivia described felt so achingly familiar to me because it’s something I’ve experienced so many times in my life. A situation that, I’m guessing, you’ve experienced too. A situation that can be summarized in ten words:

Too much to do.

Not enough hours in the day.

Over the next hour, Olivia shared everything that had been weighing heavily on her spirit. It all came out in a tumble. Parts of the story I knew, others I did not.

Olivia was attending graduate school full-time, working towards her master’s degree and earning straight A’s in all of her classes. This program was incredibly rewarding—and also, incredibly expensive. She was (understandably) nervous about racking up student loan debt that she’d never be able to repay. This anxiety crept around her neck, hot and itchy, invading her dreams, often keeping her awake at night.

To earn money, she’d gotten a part-time job and was working as many hours as she could. But this still wasn’t enough to cover the high cost of living in Boulder, Colorado. To reduce her expenses, she had found a unique living situation. She had her own private room in a lovely house—completely free—in exchange for doing yard work, dog walking, snow shoveling, and various other errands for the owner, Olivia’s godmother, who lived onsite.

It was great to save money on rent, but in between going to lectures at school, studying for exams, writing papers, working a job, and dealing with the housing-work-trade-barter situation and lengthy commutes up and down treacherous, snowy mountain roads, Olivia had virtually zero free time. Her days were crammed from dawn until bedtime.

On top of all this, her heart had been trampled by a romantic relationship that had turned sour a few months ago. Grieving this breakup made handling “the rest of life” even more difficult. Additional stress on top of stress.

She wanted to excel at school and graduate with honors. She wanted to earn enough money to cover her expenses without strain. She wanted to stay connected with friends and family, not let these relationships wither due to her busy schedule. She also wanted time to take care of her body—time to practice yoga, time to meditate, time to cook nutritious meals, and time to rest and sleep (what a concept!).

Eventually, she also wanted to meet a wonderful man, fall in love, buy some land, plant a garden, start a family, and raise children together. Her dreams were not exactly unusual or extravagant—we’re not talking about gold-plated toilets on a diamond-encrusted yacht—and yet, in this moment on my living room floor, everything felt so hard to reach. Life was so busy. Money was so tight. Time was so limited. Everything just felt so…overwhelming.

I could hear the pain in her voice, the spoken questions, and the unspoken ones, too. How will I care for a child if I can barely take care of myself? How will I get from here to where I long to be? How is it possible that I’m a smart, grown-up, adult person, and yet I’m still struggling with the most basic things—like figuring out how to manage my time?

“I always have so much to do. I never have enough time for everything. I feel like I’m drowning,” she finished bluntly, tears gushing from her eyes.

And so, here was Olivia’s predicament. A familiar dilemma, painfully relatable for me, and for so many people. Too much to do. Not enough hours in the day. Competing priorities. Overwhelm. Fried nerves.

New Year’s Eve was forty-eight hours away. But rather than feeling optimistic about the year ahead, Olivia already felt exhausted and anxious about everything that needed to be done. And the year hadn’t even begun.

“You’ve got a lot on your plate—and a lot on your mind,” I said. “It’s totally understandable that you feel overwhelmed.”

I hate seeing my sister (or anyone, really) in pain. I wish I could wave a magic wand and instantly erase all of my sister’s worries and struggles. I couldn’t offer a magic wand—but I could offer something else. Something to create a little more calm amidst the mental chaos.

“Do you want to try something with me?” I asked.

“What?” she sniffled.

“Let’s make a checklist.”

From mental chaos back to calm.

I gave Olivia a hug. We made a pot of ginger tea with honey. I brought out some big sheets of paper, Sharpie markers, bulletin boards, and brass tacks. We sat cross-legged and hashed it all out.

We started with some basic questions:

•What are your biggest priorities for the next season?

•What are your tiny goals for today? Tomorrow? The next day?

•Okay, how many of those goals can you realistically complete in a single day, while still leaving space for showering, eating, sleeping—you know, basic human-body maintenance?

•Have you been over-extending yourself, tying to cram an unreasonable number of activities into each day?

•If so, how could we scale things back to a more humane, manageable level?

About an hour later, we had distilled the maelstrom in her mind into a couple of neat, orderly checklists.

First, a Seasonal Checklist. A checklist of her biggest priorities for the next three months. The big things she wanted to accomplish and experience over the next ninety days.

Second, a Loose-End Checklist. A checklist of all the random, miscellaneous loose ends that she wanted to tie up. Little bits and bobs that had been floating around in her mind like old pennies, gum wrappers, and lint at the bottom of a backpack, creating that uneasy “I know I must be forgetting something…” feeling.

Third, a Daily Checklist. A checklist for tomorrow—not the whole week, just the next day—so she could get a good night’s sleep, wake up refreshed, and have a clear plan for the day ahead—already printed and laid out in advance.

Her tears dried. Her shoulders dropped out of her ears. The storm clouds seemed to be parting.

“Feel better?” I asked.

She did.

Significantly better.

All because of one hour of talking and planning, a few sheets of paper, a pen. Nothing flashy or complicated. Just making a few lists, which is something that most people instinctively know how to do.

I could see the glow of hope returning to Olivia’s eyes. She still had a very demanding year ahead—no doubt—but after one hour of checklist-making, she seemed at least 20 percent more confident in her abilities to handle things successfully. Sometimes, 20 percent makes all the difference in the world.

This is why I love checklists—and why I felt inspired to write an entire book about them.

How checklists have changed my life.

For most of my life—practically as long as I can remember—I’ve used checklists to organize my life. From the moment I could hold a pencil in my hands and write, I’ve been making lists and checking them off.

I was very young when I first experienced the oh-so-satisfying sensation of putting a big, fat checkmark next to a completed item. Even as I type that word—checkmark—I feel an involuntary sigh, a feeling of sweet release, an almost erotic thrill (hahahaaaaa—oh, but it’s true) cascading through my body. Ahhhh. The glorious checkmark. The powerful symbol of an intention that’s been set—and realized. A goal—achieved. A victory—won. Visible evidence of progress—made.

I love checklists with a fervor that delights some and frightens others. As Brenda, my editor at Mango Publishing, once put it, “Alex, once you start talking about checklists, you get this…um…gleam in your eyes.”

I think “gleam” is a euphemism for “evangelistic, manic zeal.”

Brenda is right. Once you get me talking about checklists, the gleam arises, and it’s difficult for me to stop—because checklists have shaped my life in so many beautiful ways. I just want to spread the Checklist Gospel to anyone who’s willing to listen.

Checklists have helped me to navigate several complex, long-distance moves—from Los Angeles to New Zealand, New Zealand to Minnesota, Minnesota to Oregon, and Oregon to Hawaii.

Checklists have made it possible for me to complete numerous professional projects with tight deadlines, even tighter budgets, and lots of moving parts—including producing events in more than twenty cities around the world, writing several books (and securing book deals), writing hundreds of articles and essays, working behind-the-scenes as a writer, editor, consultant, and content creator for my clients, launching my own website, business, and podcast, and years later, launching a book publishing imprint called The Tiny Press.

But the biggest reason why I love checklists—and why I felt compelled to write this book—is because checklists have helped me to strike a much healthier balance between “work” and “the rest of my life.”

By making checklists, I’m able to plan my day more thoughtfully and direct my time more effectively. Armed with a simple, neat, one-page list for the day, I find it’s much easier to make time for my loved ones, time for my health, time for connecting with nature, time for the experiences that really matter to me—experiences that have nothing to do with invoices, spreadsheets, or emails.

When I think back through the years of my life, my most precious, treasured moments include spontaneously booking a plane ticket to surprise my dad on Father’s Day. (I will never forget the look on his face.) Snuggling in bed with my mom and rubbing her feet while we watched British TV dramas in the middle of the afternoon just because we felt like it. Making Swedish meatballs on Christmas Eve with my brother and his wife. Braiding my sister’s long, dark hair while she played Dixie Chicks songs on the guitar. Driving around in my old, scuffed up baby blue Volkswagen Beetle convertible with the top rolled down and my friend Kate playing DJ. Grieving a life-shattering breakup with the man I thought was my forever-mate, sobbing, staring at the ocean, asking God for a sign, and then—as if on cue, a cosmic wink—a humpback whale leaping from the depths of the sea.

On my deathbed, these are the memories that will flash before my eyes.

Not the thousands of emails I’ve answered.

And this is why I get that wild gleam in my eyes when I talk about checklists. Because for me, checklists are not really about doing more. For me, checklists are about living more—making room in your life for the moments that matter, for the beautiful memories that you’ll carry to your deathbed.

The Franzen Checklist Method.

I have a unique way of making checklists.

It’s not just “writing down a bunch of stuff I need to do.”

There’s a particular method I’ve developed, which I’ll teach you in the pages of this book.

This method, which for simplicity’s sake I call The Franzen Checklist Method, is informed by several things:

•My lifelong practice of yoga, which taught me the importance of setting a clear intention before beginning a new project, goal, day, week, month—anything in life.

•My early-life training in music, dance, theater, and improv comedy (thousands of hours in total), which taught me the value of creatively experimenting, trusting your instincts, and improvising when something doesn’t feel right.

•My helicopter pilot training in my late teens/early twenties (I’ll share that story with you later!), which was my first exposure to Pre-Flight Checklists—mandatory checklists which can prevent tragic mistakes and literally save your life.

•Conversations with dozens of psychologists, counselors, and life coaches—wonderful friends, clients, and colleagues—about how the mind works, why people get stuck, and how to get unstuck.

•Years of trial and error and experimentation on myself, trying to figure out which types of checklists work best for my brain and why.

All of this has gelled together to create a particular way of approaching checklists—in particular, making a Daily Checklist, which you’ll learn in chapter five of this book.

To be honest, I didn’t even realize that I had a “special approach” or “unique method” until I starting teaching my checklist-making process to other people—from clients to friends and family. People told me, “This is pretty cool. You should really put your checklist method into a book or something.”

At first I resisted—“Oh no, that’s silly. It’s not like I’m a psychologist or anything like that. This is just something I do for myself. It’s no big deal”—but several people lovingly nudged and encouraged me.

My confidence grew after I decided to teach a class called “Get It Done,” which had around fifty students in attendance. The students were diverse. Teenagers. College students. Professors. Full-time parents. Business owners. All ages. All the way up to people in their sixties, seventies, and beyond.

The purpose of the class was to choose a project that they had been procrastinating on—any type of project, like a creative project, business project, financial project, house/domestic project, or a personal project like writing poetry or editing a series of YouTube videos, any project they had been neglecting or avoiding—focus on their project for three days in a row, and finally get it done.

On the first day of class, I taught the Franzen Checklist Method and urged everyone to send photographic evidence to me.

“Take a photo of your checklist first thing in the morning and please email it to me,” I told everyone. “Then, at the end of the day, before bedtime, take another photo of your checklist—hopefully, all filled up with checkmarks. Send that photo to me too.”

Soon, my inbox was filled with people’s beautiful checklists—which to me, is basically the equivalent of tantalizing X-rated pornography. I was in heaven. People emailed to report: “This is really helping me feel calmer!” “I feel organized!” “Look! I can barely believe it! I did almost everything on my list!”

Several months after the class ended, I still got occasional emails from participants saying things like, “I’ve become obsessed with checklists” or, “This has helped so much.”

Now, years later, after sharing my checklist methods with friends, family, clients, colleagues, students, and approximately 12,000 e-newsletter readers who follow my work online, I’m so happy to teach my methods to you.

My intention for this book.

I begin every creative project with an intention, much like setting an intention before meditating.

Here is my intention for The Checklist Book.

•Gently help you evaluate your life and make some important decisions about where your time is going.

•Teach you my personal checklist methods, which I’ve used for years behind-the-scenes in my own life and career—and which I’ve also taught to people of all ages, from high school students to CEOs.

•Help you set realistic goals, celebrate tiny wins, reduce stress and overwhelm, and feel calmer (and more proud of yourself) every day.

•Ultimately, help you die peacefully and exit this world with more memories that you cherish—and fewer regrets.

•To help you make some checklists!