I’m a big fan of lists, but lists can be dangerous for HSPs. Here’s how to avoid the pitfalls of a bad list.

I love lists. I’m like Toad in Arnold Lobel’s children’s books about the adventures of Frog and Toad:

One morning Toad sat in bed.

“I have many things to do,” he said. “I will write them

all down on a list

so that I can remember them.”

Toad wrote on a piece of paper:

A List of things to do today.

Then he wrote

Wake up

I have done that, said Toad,

And he crossed out: Wake up.

I adore Toad. Like him, I put things on my list after I’ve done them—just to have the pleasure of crossing them off. (You can read the rest of this Frog and Toad story here. In addition to being very funny, it features one of my favorite expostulations: “Blah.”*)

Lists can be a godsend for highly sensitive people (HSPs.) I’ve written an entire post about the benefits of lists, here. However, the wrong kind of list can leave you feeling burdened, guilty, or flat-out overwhelmed. It all depends what you put on the list, and how you pay attention as you make it.

HSPs tend to be highly conscientious. Once we’ve made a commitment, we feel bad changing it. That’s why we need to take care as we enter into commitments. How do you make a list that energizes and inspires you, rather than weighing on you? Here are four steps I find helpful.

1—Be choosy

As a teacher once commented to me, “An idea without a plan is a fantasy.” A fantasy is an action or project you don’t have time or energy for. When you put a fantasy on your to-do list, you instantly create stress.

As you make your list, be aware of your energy. Only one kind of energy belongs in your list: intention. Intending feels completely different than shoulding or wishing. “Shoulding” yourself feels lousy, and wishing feels, well, wishy-washy.

When you engage your intent, by contrast, you tap into your most powerful energy. You are saying, in effect, “I WILL do this.” You might plan to do it today, tomorrow; or next week. The key is to have a plan.

Making this kind of “clean,” energizing list requires you to use your considerable HSP discernment. Be choosy. Include only those items that you strongly intend to do.

If you have any doubt about an item, or if it doesn’t make the cut but you want to be sure not to forget about it, put it on a separate list. Label this list “Possible.” Now, your conscientious brain can relax. It knows you won’t lose track of the items on the “Possible” list, even if you can’t do them today.

Even better, the word “possible” soothes your conscientious side. You aren’t saying you will do this thing: you are just saying it is possible.

I can tell when I’ve succeeded in energetically cleaning up my list. I relax. I feel relief and calm—the opposite of the way I feel when I commit myself to do things I don’t have time or energy to do.

2—Distinguish actions from projects

Now, you’ve distilled your list down to things you are truly willing, able, and ready to do. You are close to having a great list. Next, you need to implement David Allen’s brilliant distinction: is this item an action, or a project?

If you put a project on your to-do list, you will not be able to cross it off, even if you’ve made progress on it. Why? Because a project consists of multiple actions. Last year, for example, my partner and I decided to repaint our kitchen. “Repaint the kitchen” is a project, not an action. To generate a to-do list around this project, we had to figure out the very next action.

In our case, the first “very next action” was to decide what weekend to paint the kitchen. That was something we could put on a list, then cross off. Once we’d done that, a series of “very next actions” followed:

• Pick up paint chips at Home Depot
• Assess the chips at home
• Choose a paint color
• Assess our rollers and brushes
• Go back to Home Depot and buy the paint (and brushes if needed)

You get the idea. “Visit Home Depot and pick up paint chips,” for example, is a concrete, discrete, doable action. You can look at it and say, “Sure, I can do that during my lunch hour today,” or, “That will have to wait until Saturday.” In this case, I did keep a separate list of all the painting steps: that way my brain wouldn’t “ping” me, worrying I’d forget things. However, nothing went on my daily list unless I fully intended to do it that day.

3— Take time to sense within

What if you’ve identified your next action, and you have time to do it, and you believe you intend to do it… but you don’t do it? In this case, your next step may be what I call an “inside job:” to go within and sense what is between you and doing the task.

I had to do an “inside job” myself this week. My partner and I have been contemplating the purchase of a used electric vehicle. Last weekend we decided to go further. My partner arranged to have an electrician come give us an estimate to have a charging station installed, and we went and drove an EV at a local dealer.

The electrical estimate hadn’t even come back before my partner spotted a likely car online. This itself was a small miracle, because the year, make, and model we’d been focusing on is as scarce as hen’s teeth, let alone the red color. But…but. The car was in Virginia—eight hours away. We have to take it sight unseen.

Up to this point, we’d been steadily working through our car-purchase to-do list. My partner was “all systems go,” and the logical next step appeared to be, “Make an offer on this car.” I couldn’t do it. I felt a big “Noooo!” inside, like I was being dragged over a cliff.

It took me several days to get to the bottom of this. Sometimes—and not only with big actions like buying a car—it takes time for the dust to settle enough so that you can get to the next step:

4— Listen to your spiritual intuition

At first, I truly believed the fear was coming from my common sense. It was telling me, “This is crazy. You can’t buy a car sight unseen.” It’s true, I’ve never bought car sight unseen. It’s not my preference. Still, I kept listening inside. I realized that underneath the specific fears was a deeper fear: something in me felt scared of so much change.

In fact, that part wanted to slam on the brakes altogether. It reminded me that I love my old car, even though I know it’s reaching the age of replacement. I’m used to driving a gas vehicle. I’m also used to a certain car-buying process. It wanted me to foresee and prevent every possible concern, pitfall, and risk of this newfangled electrical scenario.

As I kept listening, though, a deeper knowing came. I call this spiritual intuition. It is our greatest HSP strength. I remembered that my partner and I have a deal: “Whoever is in less fear, leads.” He’s highly responsible and detail-oriented. He has an overall feeling of rightness about this EV idea. I can trust him.

I realized that as we go forward with this process, I can let him lead. I just have to keep my arm around the scared part. Otherwise, it will try to run the show. If I can keep it company, though, then I can feel the truth inside: deep down, I too feel that an EV is the right next step. In fact, the whole thing was my idea in the first place! Go figure.

One final thought about HSPs and lists

We’ve explored the reality that making good lists requires HSPs to be choosy, discerning, and self-disciplined. I just want to say that this is not easy. It forces us to face our mortality. We are creative. We are imaginative.

In short, we see all sorts of possibilities, and if we’re not careful, we’ll triple-book ourselves. Then we fall into a self-created pit of overwhelm, disappointment, and self-criticism when we fail to get to everything. As painful as that is, however, it’s not the bottom layer. Underneath lies the pain we feel when we realize time and again that we can’t do everything. We have to pick and choose.

We understandably struggle to accept this.

That’s why even the best list is, in the end, only one piece of the HSP sustainability puzzle. To make lists and plans that are realistic rather than fantastical, you need to know how much time you have available for actions and projects. This, in turn, requires some sort of consistent routine. And to set that up, you have to know what you most value.

Why are you here? What do you want to accomplish, and how do you want to be, during your short time on our beautiful planet? These are the deep questions you will keep asking and answering as long as you are alive, and your lists represent the moment where the rubber hits the road.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

*Toad’s exclamation—“Blah!”—is my favorite expression of eye-rolling frustration when bothersome things happen. Forgot to thaw the chicken for dinner? “Blah!” Dropped an egg on the floor? “Blah!” Try it. The way that word feels as you say it is ridiculously satisfying.