The To-Do List: a controversial topic among productivity YouTubers. Do you really need them? How can you even begin to organize your day without them?Are they even useful if you don’t make time in your calendar to complete the tasks? As a stage manager who uses to-do lists every moment of the working day, from elaborate, 4-page pre-production lists all the way to the humble sticky note, I’m well versed in to-do list rhetoric and philosophy. But lately, I’ve been saying “to hell with it all.”
At the beginning of the pandemic, you could count on me to make a daily to-do list filled with literally any task I could think of, grasping for some semblance of grounding and direction in my life. I would busy my day with the most mundane tasks that I contracted myself to via the omnipotent to-do list, and I would often not even accomplish those tasks. I was determined to prove somehow that I was still working towards something, even though the pandemic had thrusted me into a blank, infinite and gravity-less personal hell, with no hope of ever leaving. My to-do lists were both my refuge and my poison.
I attribute most of this behavior to America’s horrendous work and productivity culture. We’re conditioned from a young age to value ourselves and others based on what we “contribute” to society. I think if you relate at all to what I’ve said above, you’ve also been affected by this culture. The working class is in constant competition to produce more than the person next to them in hopes of achieving greater social standing, or at least an early retirement. While I like to think that I’ve broken out of this box because I’ve chosen a career in the arts, I’ve realized lately how wrong that assumption is. Productivity culture is every bit as ingrained in me as it is the next person. And as we’ve all learned, pandemics do not play nice with our workaholic tendencies.
I’m at a unique point in my life and career where I’m basically in a limbo: there really isn’t anything I can do other than go to my 9-5, come home, and repeat. I have all my needs met right now, and I have secured a place in a graduate program for the fall. I’m literally just waiting for the next stage of my life to begin. So why do I insist on creating to-do lists every five minutes?
Cue existential crisis.
I’ve been reckoning a lot with “productivity” and my relationship to “accomplishing goals” for the past few months, and finding myself more inspired to do things out of pleasure rather than some invisible productivity contract between me and the rest of the world. I, like many other people, can’t help but organize my life in a series of check-boxed tasks; hell, there is a whole market out there to help us “be more productive”. But while I acknowledge that productivity has it’s time and place, I’ve really been thinking about how it can be a hinderance to real pleasure and creativity.
The productivity machine only ever exists to serve the people that own the workforce: capitalism demands high productivity and competition from the working class in order to function. Without a working class hell-bent on producing more and more, whether that be physical goods, services, or even artistic content, our economy stops functioning. Productivity culture cannot nurture real pleasure and creativity, because it requires us to prioritize output over leisure.
Disclaimer: I still subscribe to productivity YouTubers and take tips from blog posts. Productivity will always be relevant so long as we live in a capitalistic society: I need to make a living by being productive. These tips also help me do the job that I love, which requires me to be highly organized and efficient while producing a piece of theatre. But there is no reason for this mindset to permeate every part of my life. Creative ideas don’t come to me when I’m thinking about calendar blocking time to do my laundry, and they certainly don’t pop up while I’m drafting my to-do lists.
So this is my official break-up with to-do lists… for now. We’ll eventually have to get back together once I start school and theatre projects again. But right now, in this finite moment when I have literally nothing else to do, I’m going to enjoy the abyss of forced leisure. Maybe I’ll conceive my magnum opus, or maybe I’ll spend the next four months watching Netflix in bed (make your bets in the comments!).
In the meantime, enjoy a to-do list written by yours truly! If you’re a stage manager, you can subscribe here to get a free download of my pre-production checklist that I use before I start any show.