Satisfying vs. Productive

What constitutes a satisfying weekend day? Is it one in which you run all the errands and finish all the tasks that accumulated in the course of the week that was? Or is it a day devoted to recreation, a clearly demarcated zone of you time: sleep in, lingering coffee hour, maybe a family outing, dinner with friends? Does it include some delicate balance of decompression and preparation that you only know when you achieve it?I used the word “satisfying” above, but I originally had “productive.” A productive day implies a day in which you got some things done, a certain degree of industry.Whereas a satisfying day might be one in which you didn’t necessarily do very much at all, but the contents of the day seem totally appropriate given any number of factors: the weather, the mood and mind-set of the participants, the complexion of the days leading up to it, the forecasted events of the days to come.

It can be hard sometimes, for those of us who are perpetually running over a mental list of things to do, things undone, to accept a day in which no boxes got checked off to qualify as productive.That list.An eternal scroll where any completed task is immediately replaced by another to be done, a constantly computing ledger that always runs a deficit.

I’ve been trying to ignore the master mental to-do list, to see it for what it is: It’s really a secret record of failure, disguised as a high achiever’s rigorous planning tool, kept by someone (me!) who’s not overly invested in my success.An impressive lifelong project, maybe, but what about it is satisfying, what about it is creative or joyful or helping anyone or anything? It gives one an illusion of control, as in the Mary Oliver poem “I Worried”: “I worried a lot.

Will the garden grow, will the rivers / flow in the right direction, will the earth turn / as it was taught, and if not how shall / I correct it?”The handwritten to-do list is a far more useful tool.I like to make a list that inclu...