Satisfying vs. Productive

Briefing|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 includes real chores (take the car for inspection, wash the windows) and things I’d like to do that aren’t necessarily arduous (lower-body workout, make soup) but feel like drudgery when they’re allowed to swirl around in my brain with other unpleasant travails. Just creating a short, achievable to-do list can make an otherwise amorphous weekend day feel structured, can quiet the inner critic.

My friend Peter mused recently that it might be interesting to devote a to-do list to only pleasurable activities: have pancakes, sit on the stoop in the sun, get a hot dog, watch a true-crime docuseries, nap. I wondered if putting something on a list automatically makes it a chore. I’ve marveled at how my inner taskmaster and inner brat seem to always be doing battle, such that I can get perverse joy out of canceling plans I’ve been looking forward to for weeks. I imagine I could turn even a list of unalloyed fun into a site of conflict. It’s the control thing, again.

What would constitute a satisfying day today? I think just asking the question sets one up for success. We spend a lot of time ruing the things we didn’t get done after the fact, but maybe more intention is what’s in order. How do you want to feel come bedtime? What things do you need to do, what plans do you need to make or break, in order to get there?