Confessions of a Checklist Junkie

A couple of years ago, one of my younger brothers signed up for a citizen’s police academy, during which he volunteered to be tased. Yes, you read that right. He volunteered. The footage of this epic experience circulated the ranks of our family for a few weeks, and all of us—including him—were both horrified and amused by his electrifying reaction.  

To me, it looked like something out of a nightmare; to him, it was a rush of pure adrenaline, like mountain biking or skiing on black diamond trails. I couldn’t understand it. I’ve never considered myself an adrenaline junkie; the most extreme sport I’ve ever done is paddleboard yoga in the pool. Why would a person seek out that kind of thrill? What is to be gained? 

 

Recently, though, I’ve come to realize that I’m not as different from my brother as I once thought. I, too, thrive on a certain kind of rush: the rush of accomplishment.

 

I’m a checklist junkie. I’ve known this for some time, but I’ve only just caught up with how deep this obssession goes. 

 

For example, I design, print, and bind my own personalized planner every semester. Each daily page has no less than three separate, to-do lists; one for home tasks, one for work, and one for school. I have been known to complete a task and, once I realized it wasn’t on my list, write it down so I could check it off.

There’s nothing like the sense of well-being I get when I look back on the day and congratulate myself on all the stuff I got done. I’d say it’s even better than reading comments or counting likes on social media posts for me. It feels good, it’s how I measure success, and it’s sometimes the only thing that keeps me going.

 

My husband calls me hyper-productive, and I guess that’s true. And he means it as a compliment. But over the years, I’ve noticed being a checklist junkie comes with significant challenges, particularly for the people who have to live with me or be my friend.

 

It’s easy for family members and friends of hyper-productive people to feel lazy or incompetent. They’re not! But no matter how much I emphasize this fact, they often feel like they are. When I make a long list and then run around trying to check everything off that list, people around me feel indolent by comparison, no matter how much they get done, and no matter how much time they spend getting things done.

 

Another drawback of being hooked on checking off to-do items is that I tend to overdo it. I do too many things for too many people, and it robs them of the opportunity to do what they can for themselves. I’m so anxious to get a task done that I often forget to ask myself who should really be doing it. I need to remind myself that it’s okay to let some items remain undone, and it’s okay to let other people do things, but I often forget this in my quest for the particular adrenaline rush tied to checking off tasks.

 

So what should you do, if you, like me, are a hyper-productive, over-enthusiastic accomplisher of tasks? And what should you do if you spend significant amounts of time in the company of someone like me?

 

The first step for us checklist junkies, I think, is to be deliberate and mindful about the tasks we put on our lists. Just because it needs to get done doesn’t mean we are the ones who should do it. Perhaps, instead of listing “fold laundry,” we could try something like, “help Sam fold his laundry” or “kindly remind Amy to put away her clean clothes.” If you think about it, it’s selfish of us to keep all those good feelings of accomplishment to ourselves. We can share the tasks and share the euphoria of checking them off.

 

Another way we can prevent our hyper-productivity from overrunning others’ senses of competence is to include self-care items on our list. Tasks like, “take a bath,” “read a book,” or “watch a mindless (but wholesome) television show” are more likely to get done if they’re on the list. So while we’re enjoying the rush of accomplishment we thrive on, we’re also giving our family and friends permission to relax in our presence, and that is truly a gift.

 

If you are on the other side of this relationship, however, as a person who lives with or befriends a checklist junkie, might I suggest you try to understand what makes us tick? We’re not hyper-productive because we’re trying to make everyone around us feel bad, and we’re certainly not trying to show anyone up. We just like crawling into bed at the end of the day with the feeling that it was a day well spent, that we accomplished what we set out to do. I’m telling you, it really is an adrenaline rush.

 

And if you want to help out, if you get the feeling that there are too many tasks on our lists and you worry that we’ll burn out before we check them all off, well, you may be right. But here’s a secret: the rush usually comes from checking off the task, not doing it. So if you find one of our to-do lists lying around, maybe read through it and see if there’s something on that list you can do. When it’s done, we’ll feel just as good about checking off that task as if we’d done it ourselves. And who knows? You might even get a taste of what it feels like to be a checklist junkie.

Poem on Contemplating Policy

It’s hard to fend off
the vertigo of a constantly
shifting
perspective.
But is there any other way
to see?
Sometimes the ten thousand foot view
is calm and clear
while trouble
brews below.
And sometimes a moment
resolves as it should
for one single, significant person
while blackening storm clouds
gather overhead.
Who’s to say
what the weather really is?
And how can the needs of the masses
mean more than the one?
It’s a delicate tightrope
we walk,
when we try to say what matters
and to whom.
It all depends on who’s looking
and from where.

Thoughts on Health Care Policy debates

 In what I often think of now as a former life, I spent a decade or so in academia. I earned a BA and an MA in English Literature, reading primary works of authorship as well as critical analyses of those works, and writing my own analyses for contribution to that storehouse from which I drew interpretation. I taught composition and literature at three different universities, first as a graduate teaching assistant and then as an adjunct faculty member. I could wax eloquent on any number of themes, characters, plots, and lines from prose and poetry. And I thought I was making inroads into expanding the creation and appreciation of the literary arts in the world around me.

Then my family grew and my husband’s obligations in medical school and then residency increased, and I dropped out of the academic world to pursue full-time domestic and matriarchal obligations. I also started writing my own “great American” novels, and what I discovered was not pretty. It’s much more difficult to write a novel than it is to critique one. I have written and revised three full-length novels. And I’ve had ample opportunities to use my editing skills to polish and hone the prose of multiple authors. The creation process is far more difficult than any amount of critical analysis I’ve ever done.

And while I’m not saying that critical analysis has no place in problem-solving, I do wonder if it merits the high value we seem to place upon it. Take the Donabedian model for measuring quality care, for example. I read about this model during my outside research for my substantial writing paper, I found an article in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine titled "Direct Primary Care: Applying Theory to Potential Changes in Delivery and Outcomes" by Evan S. Cole, PhD that attempted to evaluate Direct Primary Care using Starfield’s adaptation of Donabedian’s Struc- ture-Process-Outcome conceptual model.

My impression, after reading about Danobedian’s model in its own words, was that it was a lot of abstractions designed to sound impressive but without adding anything of real value for innovators trying to solve problems in the field of healthcare. It reminds me of the Confucian proverb about lighting a single candle versus cursing the darkness. I often get the sense that critics, scholars, and committees spend their time measuring and analyzing the darkness, weighing the pros and cons of hypothetical solutions (LED vs. halogen vs. CFC vs. incandescent) and making suggestions for what changes should be made but not actually doing anything about the problem. Meanwhile, the few innovators in the field light candles and listen to criticism from those critics, scholars, and committees because their solution isn’t big enough, doesn’t light up the space enough, and has downsides like using nonrenewable resources or adding to air pollution.

But every society and civilization has limited resources in terms of intellectual capacity and time, not just money. Has anyone ever scrutinized the committee and scholarly methods of solving problems? There’s a saying about a camel being a horse designed by a committee, and I don’t think it’s that far off base. Where is the study comparing solutions designed and implemented by pundits against solutions designed by the boots-on-the-ground? All the research and thinking and talking and designing represents non-renewable resources. In those terms, the cost of these solutions is astronomical, but does it produce better results?

I’m not saying we don’t need people to do studies and look into this incredibly complex and far-reaching problem. I am saying that if the results of those studies will be to place the vested players under a microscope, maybe we should examine whether the studies themselves are valuable. Could all of the time they spent gathering and analyzing data, reporting back to one another, discussing and producing reports, and creating models for measuring quality care be better spent on something else? Like actually doing any one of the many things they suggest other people do to solve the problem in the first place?

The further I get into academia, the more I feel that sometimes—maybe even often—it is part of the problem. It’s a misallocation of resources that ends up costing the system it’s designed to ameliorate. And I wonder if the cost to the system is greater than the gains it produces. I think maybe someone should look into that.

A Time to Every Purpose

On late summer evenings,
I straddle the edge between awake and asleep,
lights all out and
windows open wide.

The wind,
tired of lining out leaves and branches that refuse to stay straight,
sidles into my bedroom,
knocking around the blinds and
checking some papers on the dresser
before wandering back out.

I know these nights are not the time to make plans.

They are only for listening --
to the faint, minor tones of a near wind chime, and
to the plaintive chirrup of a nearer cricket.
Listening to the rustled whispering of dreams queueing up.
But mostly, listening to
tomorrow settling in to wait until dawn.

For hope is a morning bird,
but peace hides in the shadows of dusk.

A Flash of Insight On Being The Writer

Dear Writer,

I've been thinking about this for a long time -- years, actually -- ever since I started down the road of pouring my energy, my ideas, my whole soul into a manuscript I hoped would someday blossom into a real, published novel. I've spent decades opening myself up, like you, to judgment and criticism, exposing the dearest parts of myself and my dreams to strangers and critics. I've been a critic myself, as a writing teacher, as a beta reader, and now as an intern. But I am absolutely convinced that

the writer's job is the hardest of them all.

That's right. Sure, it's difficult to develop the taste, the skill, and the sensibility to identify what's wrong with a manuscript and to offer that kind of criticism. It's hard to judge someone else's work -- or, at least, it's hard to do it well. It can be challenging to find exactly the right words to describe what's not working and why. It's also hard to just say no without offering a querier any feedback on what's going wrong. But no matter how difficult it is to identify the flaws in someone else's work,

it's harder to actually write a good book.

So when you feel judged and critiqued and mistreated because so many people standing between you and your publishing goals seem to be looking down their noses at your efforts, when you wonder who died and pronounced them the gods of taste and literary refinement, when the last shreds of dignity and pride bristle at yet another form rejection in your inbox, remember this: their critiques may be spot on, they may be exactly right about what's wrong with your work and what you need to fix, but that doesn't mean they're better than you or they can take anything away from you.

You are still a writer. You are doing the hardest job of all.

I have played the piano since I was a child and the organ for almost as long. I have had numerous occasions to play the organ for large groups of people: 500 to 800 church-goers in one room. I love playing the organ because it has all kinds of stops and associated sounds. There's something satisfying about feeling (not just hearing) the sound reverberate under your fingers, especially if you turn on the great bass coupler. Have I ever made mistakes while playing the organ in front of those 500-800 people? You bet! But one thought provides all the solace I need to move past those mistakes and keep playing: I'm the one on the bench. None of those 500 to 800 people are playing the organ. 99.9% of them wouldn't even begin to know how, and of the .1% that do, none of them are volunteering to take over for me.

So it is with you. You're on the bench, pounding out your story with all the stops open. Your job is the hardest of all, but you're still doing it. Props to you, fellow writer. No matter how much the critics rage or rave, you're still doing the hardest job of all. And don't you ever forget it.

Love,
Shaunna

Thoughts on Reading Queries

I've found myself in a most unusual position this summer. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. I know of more than one published author who started out interning for a literary agency and then used what s/he learned to write an effective query letter (and manuscript), land an agent, and get a book deal. I don't know of anyone who started out querying and then became an intern. Until now.

In the course of my work for the ELA (Excellent Literary Agent) this summer, I've been tasked with sorting through her query inbox and reading partial and full manuscript submissions. It's enlightening to be on the other side of the query stream.

When I wrote my first novel (over ten years ago) and started learning about publishing, agenting, and querying, I didn't know what I was doing (of course). And even though I haven't exactly come full circle, I do have some valuable thoughts on the subject that might be interesting to...nobody actually. I don't think anyone reads my blog anymore, given my two-year radio silence, but I've started posting again anyway, mostly for my own amusement.

So here is a thought: sorting through incoming queries is like taking a standardized test. That's something I know lots about, actually, because I taught LSAT and SAT prep courses for the Princeton Review (in what feels like another lifetime), and because I'm very good at taking standardized tests.

When you take a standardized test (if you wish to do well on it, that is), you have to approach it from a certain frame of mind. If there are five answer choices, four of them will always be the wrong answer. If a test taker approaches each answer choice by looking for how it could be right, she'll never get through the test. The only way to succeed is to look for something that's wrong. After all, there's an 80% chance that any given answer choice is wrong.

When you take a standardized test looking for what is wrong with each answer, you chug through the questions before the time expires, and you usually do very well. I have found that the same frame of mind applies to the intern reading queries.

If she spends her time looking for what's right with a query, she'll probably find something about 80% of the time. The world is full of writers, and each person, as a unique child of God, has a different story with a unique set of strengths. While it would be truly heartening to request to read the full manuscript for every query in an agent's inbox, the intern would never get through them before the time expired. Just like a standardized test, see?

So the smart intern who has an inbox of three dozen queries to sort through in less than an hour does what any good test taker does: she looks for what's wrong with the query so she can quickly weed out the ones that aren't going to work. And like any good test taker knows, some wrong answers are easy to spot. In the world of queries, here are some good ways to eliminate a query without reading it twice:

1. Character soup
The intern doesn't need to know the first and last name of your main character and his or her five best friends. If you want to include those characters, you can simply refer to them by their relationship(s) to the MC. So the MC's mother doesn't need a name, just a designation as the MC's mother. You don't need last names, either. Those just take up precious word space. We populate our books with characters we grow to love almost as much as our own children, and we don't want them to feel left out of anything. But the query is not the place for them. Here, as in Coco Chanel's world of high fashion, less is more.

2. Word Count
A first-time author with a YA Fantasy clocking in at 200,000+ words is a first-time author who hasn't spent any time researching what sells and what is traditional. If you want to write a 200,000+ word YA Fantasy, you can. It just can't be your first. Plus, it feels like it's only 200,000+ words because you're too in love with your babies to kill them, and no agent wants to hold your hand through chopping your novel in half. Not going to happen.

3. Theme v. Plot
Wordsworth said literature should both delight and instruct. It's fine to put themes in your writing. Don't point them out in a query, especially at the expense of detailing the plot. The plot is the delightful part of a book; the theme is the instruction. Leave the theme analysis to those stuffy college professors who have nothing better to do than publish papers in literary journals that nobody, not even the intern, reads. Use the query to tell the intern who the MC is, what choice s/he has to make, and what's at stake.

Of course, if you haven't read the QueryShark archives, you should do that first. But I think it's valuable to consider the query process from the intern's point of view. If you realize that your query is read, not for what's RIGHT but for what's WRONG, you can pass the first hurdle by making sure nothing is glaringly wrong.

Ode to Dirt or How Do You Vacuum a Vacuum?

O Dirt! Where do I find thee? Let me count the places.
Under my children's fingernails and in the folds and grooves of their ears,
In the washing machine where the water doesn't reach and the lint collector where the crevice tool won't reach either,
On the window blinds (of course) and the tops of the baseboards,
In the bathtub after draining the water to find each rubber duck traced in dirt on the porcelain,
Ground into my carpet and tracked across my kitchen and (after a rousing wrestling match) sprinkled like salt on my sheets,
In all the places I clean daily and weekly and monthly and never, and even in places I thought were perfectly sealed.
You sly exfoliant, you!
I lay awake at night, conjuring schemes for your eradication, my critical thinking skills taxed to the utmost at the contemplation of your demise.
And yet, without you, where would I be?
What would I do with myself, had I no dirt to clean?
How would I sleep at night, not knowing how to fill the endless hours of the next morning, frozen in the suspense of a spotless day?
And so, I salute you, devil though you may be, in your red and dusty glory, for because of you, I have learned.
Because of you, I am strong.
And also, you can vacuum a vacuum with another vacuum or with a husband willing to give you a hand.