Problems Are a Bucket, Not a List

 

Photo by Galen Crout on Unsplash

I rolled over and looked at my clock.

2:42 am.

Nobody should be awake at that unholy hour, but I’d been lying there for a while, trying to think of a reason I couldn’t just go back to sleep already.

My Oura ring tracks my sleep. It regularly tells me how bad I am at getting an adequate amount which sometimes adds to my brain’s resistance to sleep.

3 hours, 21 minutes.

Too many nights lately, my ring has decided I’m just taking a long nap instead of actually, you know, sleeping.

My to-do list is long:

• 40 separate, work-related projects.
• A house that’s 21 years old and, let’s face it, they don’t build ’em like they used to.
• Exercise? Not happening.
• Eating right? Maybe next week.

My to-do list is like a rope made up of a thousand strands, each one frayed at the end, and I’m trying to snip them one at a time with a dull pair of those tiny travel-sewing-kit scissors.

Futile.

There’s no finish line, no moment when the last thing gets checked off, the last email gets sent, and I get to put my completed to do list in a drawer, never to be touched again. The list is always going to regenerate as fast (or faster) than I can cross things off, and some tasks burst onto the scene, demanding my attention, before I can even write them down. If you have a boss who understands prioritizing about as well as a four-year-old understands quantum mechanics then you know what I’m talking about.

The things to do and problems to solve are steady drips of water falling into a bucket that will never be emptied during a person’s life.

So. . .do we just give up? Surrender to the idea that we’ll never empty the bucket so what’s the point in trying?

Some people do.

For the rest of us, we have to embrace the truth that humans are wired to be problem-solving creatures. When we lack friction in our lives, we create it so we have something to solve.

An important, and often overlooked, aspect of this truth, however, is that we can’t do it all. It’s impossible to tackle every challenge, meet every opportunity, and do all the things.

So we have to choose.

And sometimes, the choice paralyzes us, and it’s not because we’re incapable, but because the sheer number of competing priorities makes it really hard to decide which thing is actually the most important.

In a world overrun with hacks, frameworks, gurus, and efficiency, we’ve been conditioned to believe there’s a perfect system for solving all our problems. Every productivity guru has the method for getting things done. Every business book has the strategy for prioritizing what matters. Every leadership coach has the secret to time management.

I understand that businesses need efficiency to be profitable. But there’s a vast difference between being profitable and maximizing profit at the expense of everything else. At some point, efficiency turns into extraction (exploitation?) where people stop being people. They become gears in the profit machine; expendable parts that can be tossed out when the numbers don’t align. That’s why the C-suite gets golden parachutes while hundreds of thousands lose their jobs. That’s why “doing more with less” is just corporate-speak for “squeeze harder.”

And maybe that’s why we all feel so exhausted.

So, what do we do?

We stop chasing the impossible.

We stop treating “getting everything done” as the goal because that goal is a mirage; one that is always moving out ahead of us no matter how close we think we’re getting. Instead, we redefine success. We accept that some things will not get done, and that it’s okay. The real challenge isn’t how to do more, it’s how to be okay with doing enough.

1. Identify What Actually Matters

Not everything on your list deserves your attention. So many things are urgent but meaningless, feel important but aren’t, or don’t need to be done at all. The trick is figuring out which is which.

Here’s a simple exercise:

• What would happen if you didn’t do the thing? (If the answer is “nothing,” move on.)
• Who are you really doing this for? (If it’s for appearances rather than necessity, reconsider.)
• Will this matter in a week? A month? A year? (If not, why stress over it now?)

Did you know that the plural of priority wasn’t even used much until almost 1940, and prior to the 1900s it wasn’t even a word? If everything feels like a priority then nothing is. You can’t find more time, try as you might. You just have to actively decide what’s worth your time.

2. Let Go of the “Perfect System” Illusion

The productivity world sells the idea (for 15% off if you buy today) that if you just find the right system, you’ll finally get control over your time. Spoiler alert: no system will save you.

There’s no planner, no time-blocking strategy, no AI assistant that will magically make it all fit into 16 to 20 waking-hours a day. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can stop wasting energy trying to optimize every minute of your life like you’re a machine.

Instead of obsessing over “perfect efficiency,” focus on effective sufficiency which is doing what matters most, and being okay with leaving some things undone. Like I just told my nine-year old son, you don’t have to be perfect. Most of the time, adequate is all you need.

3. Redefine Success in a Way That Doesn’t Drain You

If success is checking every box, you will never feel successful. If success is progress on what matters, suddenly, you’re winning.

• If you worked on one meaningful project today, that’s a win.
• If you took care of yourself in a way that lets you keep going tomorrow, that’s a win.
• If you spent time with people you care about instead of squeezing in “just one more task,” that’s a win.
• If you read a few pages in a good book, that’s a win.

At the end of the day, no one will remember how many emails you answered. They’ll remember how you showed up in their lives.

4. Accept That Rest Is Part of the Work

We’ve been conditioned to believe that rest is a luxury, when in reality, it’s fuel. Burnout doesn’t happen because people are weak. It happens because we’re not designed to function at full speed indefinitely. Even machines require downtime.

Because the to-do list is never ending, stopping for a moment is really the only way to keep going. A car with an empty gas tank doesn’t get anywhere.

Neither do you.

Give Yourself Permission to Let Go

The list will never be finished. The bucket will never be empty. And that’s okay.

Your job isn’t to do all the things. It’s to do the things that matter and to have a life worth living in the process.

So, go ahead and close the laptop and just enjoy that Hallmark movie with your spouse. Put the list down, and back up slowly. Remind yourself that the world won’t crumble if you take a breath. In fact, your world might crumble if you don’t take time to breathe.

Just... breathe.