I Made a List

This morning, I felt stressed. I felt that I had too much going on, crammed into too little time, and I thought I couldn't handle it. Then, after being a hopeless wreck for a few minutes, I made a list of things I had to take care of, then I mentally sorted the list.

I put on the back burner everything that I couldn't do anything about yet. I considered the deadlines of each task. I identified tasks that could wait. I picked out tasks that I could take care of relatively quickly and easily. I set lower-priority items aside and accepted that, if I didn't have time to do everything, some lower-priority items might not get done on time. In short, I reminded myself that I don't need to worry about everything at once, since I can only ever do one thing at a time anyway.

Then I chose a few of the quickest, simplest, most important, and/or most urgent things, and I did them. And I remembered that self-care tasks should be ranked among the other important tasks.

All in all, it turned out to be a half-decent day. I got several things done, and I'm confident that they were the tasks that most needed to get done today. The others can and will have to wait, perhaps even indefinitely, and I okay with that. I didn't do everything. I can't do everything. But I did the right things.