The Enough List: When a Day Does Not Need to Hold Everything
I have started habit stacking. What is that? For me, it means completing a series of daily habits, one after another.
Some have been part of my routine for a long time. I begin with quiet time on the couch and a cup of tea. Next comes my daily Bible reading, a devotional with my husband, and time together in prayer. Then I take a morning walk by myself. Recently, I have added making the bed and attending a support meeting for my eating program.
Then I start working.
My new job can send me down several rabbit holes in the course of a day. Yesterday, I was trying to automate part of my audio work to save time. It was not going well. The more I tinkered with it, the worse it became. Eventually, I returned to the original way I had been doing the task. In the time I spent trying to make the process more efficient, I could have accomplished three times as much by simply doing it the old way.
Part of me wanted to keep working until I completed everything I had originally planned. However, I knew I needed to stop. My productivity drops sharply after the middle of the afternoon. Continuing to work would not have made me more effective. It would only have left me tired and frustrated.
I have also been listening to a series of lectures called The Science of Personal Growth by Susan Peirce Thompson. Her discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of goal setting has brought me several aha moments. It helped me understand why some of my goals produced tangible results while others were completely ineffective.
What was the difference?
My book is a good example. I made the daily commitment so manageable that I could not fail. I promised myself that I would write for at least ten minutes, six days a week. After completing the first draft, I followed the same process with revising. Once I had a publisher, I continued that approach through editing and marketing.
The entire process took a year and a half.
Each day, the work I completed was enough. I did not focus on finishing an entire book. I focused on the next small step in the process. If I had awakened every morning thinking about everything required to publish a finished book, I would have felt overwhelmed. I probably would have quit somewhere along the way.
As I enter a new season in my work life, I need to bring that same philosophy with me. The tasks will get done eventually. Consistency, rather than overload, will produce results and allow me to experience contentment along the way. The amazing thing is that those small accomplishments produce a hit of feel good dopamine that I tried to get from my eating and drinking. The problem with getting dopamine from things that you did not work for ends up progressively controlling your life. That is addiction, and I'll leave that for another article.
Contentment includes accepting the limits of a single day.
Jesus reminds us in Matthew 6:34 that each day has enough trouble of its own. When I continually focus on an end goal that may be days, weeks, or months away, I place more weight on today than it was meant to carry.
What if we replaced the traditional to-do list with an “enough list”?
An enough list identifies a small, realistic amount of work that will move us forward. It sets the bar for faithfulness rather than frustration. It helps prevent procrastination because the first step feels manageable. Most importantly, it gives us permission to stop when the day’s work is done.
Choose one important task for today. Make the first step small enough to complete. Then allow that faithful progress to be enough.
When we set the bar for contentment instead of disappointment, we may be surprised by how much gets accomplished in due time.
