Using To-Do Lists to Help Manage Anxiety
To-do lists are one of the oldest productivity “hacks” in the book. These days, they’re as popular as ever, thanks to the proliferation of bullet journals and task-scheduling apps.
For most of my life, I never bothered with to-do lists. I dismissed them as superfluous and had trouble understanding why anyone found them helpful. That changed when I got my first job as a lawyer. Suddenly, I found myself faced with far more tasks than I could possibly keep track of in my head. To-do lists quickly became an essential part of my scheduling and time-management strategies.
While using to-do lists for time-management, I discovered another, unexpected, benefit of the lists: they helped me to reduce my anxiety.
I’ve struggled with anxiety for most of my life. Even small, trivial tasks often feel completely overwhelming to me. It feels as if they’re spinning around in my head, distracting me from everything else, until they’re finally completed. Putting the tasks on to-do lists helped ease these burden to a surprising degree.
How a To-Do Lists Reduces Anxiety
Much of my anxiety comes in the form of a vague feeling that there is something I was supposed to be working on. Whether I was watching TV, eating, or even in the middle of working on something productive…
