About twenty years ago I managed a pizza delivery store in Panama City Beach for a couple of friends of mine. During the spring break season, we were open 24 hours a day. It was busy. According to our food distributor, we were the busiest independent pizza store in the country based on how much cheese we ordered each week during that time. MTV was in town covering the festivities of party-goers, Spinnaker and La Vela were packed every night, and the strip was bumper to bumper traffic for miles all day, and continuing late into the night. Needless to say, getting everything done each day was a monumental task.

One of the guys I worked for there was a list-keeper. Everything he needed to do was on a list. It wasn’t always the neatest looking lists, but it worked for him. He kept everything in Steno pads. And he always seemed to have everything crossed off his list at the end of the day, for the most part. I was impressed with his ability to get it all done, but also not happy with myself for never finishing my list and always having to move things to the next day. I was a great manager, but for some reason, I could never cross everything off my list.

I finally asked him one day, “How do you get it all done? You have a page full of stuff, the same as me, but you get a lot more of it done than I do.” His reply changed my life. Well, that’s a little dramatic, but his words certainly have stayed with me for more 20 years. It was so simple. I still use his strategy today. He said, “When I get something done, I add it to my list and check it off.” Mind blown. Eyes opened. Life changed. The philosophy of that simple idea is amazingly deep.

He would start his list with what was important to be accomplished. It might only be a small handful of things. As he would get things done throughout the day, he would add those things to his list. Since those things were already done, as he added him to the list, he would check them off. That’s brilliant. Do you realize how much stuff we actually get done in a day? If you made a list, you would know. And if you knew how much you do get done, maybe you wouldn’t beat yourself up for not completing your to-do list, a list that might be unrealistic to begin with.

As 2017 draws to a close, I look back on the year and I know I did not even come close to getting all the things done that I wanted to this year. If I had made a list at the beginning of the year of all the things I wanted to get done in 2017, that list would still need some work, or the year would need to be extended. But I won’t lament or lose any sleep about not finishing my hypothetical list. I will, however, be happy with what I did accomplish, even if some of it is trivial or perhaps less productive in the big picture of life as I see it. I still got a lot done this year. I survived. And that is a rather huge accomplishment in and of itself in some respects.

I finish this year broke, but none of my bills are behind. Except my student loans, which will likely never get paid. I didn’t get much done this year on the novel I’m writing, but I estimate that I wrote about 30,000 words to my blog in 2017. Neither of those endeavors pay the bills. I really just want to make a living as a writer, but I like the job I have and the people I work with. I’m not where I want to be in life, but I am certainly not where I was a short while ago, which is a good thing. I didn’t finish everything on my list for 2017, but I am pretty happy with what I did get done, including the less important things I added to the list as I went along.

My friends, do not make an overwhelming list for yourself that you cannot finish. Once you start moving things to the next day, it becomes easier and easier to keep doing that. You will never get it done that way. Pick a few things that are important. As you move throughout your day, week, or year, add to your list the other, less important things you get done and check them off. You’ll be surprised by how much you really get done, even when it doesn’t feel like it. Happy New Year to you all. May 2018 be a year of checking off the important things on our lists and realizing how important the things not on the list are that we get done as well.

Thanks for stopping by this year. Hope to see you in 2018. Good day, God bless.

Dave