Sunday evening. I'm staring at my to-do list for the week ahead, and that familiar weight settles into my chest. There's the newsletter draft I need to finish. The client presentation to revise. Three strategy documents waiting for review. Dozens of unread emails.
My first thought: "I'm already behind."
My second thought: "Have I ever truly felt on top of things?"
That question took me by surprise. A lot of these tasks are things I chose. There's work I care about, client deliveries I find meaningful, and working with colleagues I care about. Not to mention side projects, such as writing articles like this. These are all, in theory, things I like. So why does it feel like I'm drowning in obligation?
Author Oliver Burkeman, who wrote the bestseller Four Thousand Weeks, might say it's because of my belief that it's ever possible to get on top of things in the first place.
"There will always be too much to do," Burkeman told Big Think. "That's why I think we need a way of understanding and thinking about work and productivity that does not treat getting on top of everything as the goal."
In my desperation to wrangle my PhD, I read every book under the Sun about productivity. And while I did find practices and principles that helped (thank you, Pomodoro Technique), I also deeply embedded a pernicious and destructive idea about productivity: that all of us start each day underwater.
In my mind, and the minds of many insecure overachievers, there's some invisible ledger tracking what we owe the world — what Burkeman calls a sense of "productivity debt." Everything we accomplish is just paying down the debt. Finish the presentation? Great. You're slightly less behind. Clear 50 emails? Wonderful. Only 200 more, and you might deserve to relax.
"I just need to get caught up," you tell yourself. "Once I clear the deck, then I can focus on what matters."
But the to-do list is never empty. You can't get on top of an infinite pile of possible things to do. As author Oliver Burkeman points out, "If you dedicate your life to clearing the decks, the decks will just refill as fast as you can clear them."
Your mind can categorize your to-do list as either paying down debt or building credit. When you frame work as debt, every task is something to trudge through. You feel relief when things get done, but you might not be energized by it. Frame the same task as credit-building — as a vote for working towards something or someone you care about — and it pulls you forward. The work feels different because what it means to you is different.
Here's Burkeman's radical suggestion: You don't owe the world anything to justify your existence. You start each day at zero balance, and everything you do after that is credit, building towards something you choose.
When I start my day thinking "I'm behind," every task becomes evidence of my inadequacy. When I start at zero, every task becomes a choice I'm making to build something.
The done list becomes more relevant than the to-do list. Made coffee? Credit. Wrote 200 words? Credit. Had that hard conversation with a client? Absolutely credit. Piece by piece, brick by brick, action by action, you're building a portfolio of choices that serve who you want to become.
Once you shift from debt to credit, you can start asking a different question about every task and problem that shows up: "How can this serve me?"
This becomes a creative practice of reinterpreting what happens in ways that serve you and what you care about. Your to-do list becomes a menu of ways to serve your values, your mission, your identity. You're choosing what serves you and what you care about, and problems and challenges are unavoidable along that journey. A life without them would not be easy; it would be meaningless.
Three tools to shift from debt to credit:
Start your "done" list
At the end of each day, write down what you accomplished. Not what's left. What you actually did.
Burkeman recommends that three to four hours of deep, focused work is a great standard for a day, not 10 hours of scattered task-switching.
"Alex Pang details a lot of this in his book Rest, where [many great artists, scientists, and thinkers], to an astonishingly uniform degree, dedicate about three or four hours a day, no more, to the core work of their lives that requires sort of deep thought, quiet, and focus and reflection. There's also lots of evidence to suggest that you actually are going to make more progress on focused work if you constrain it in this way."
If you need to start smaller, begin with 25 minutes and work your way up by five-minute increments every other week. That's how I developed my approach.
Your modest menu
Every morning, answer this: "If I just did these few things aligned with who I want to be, today would be good. So what do I need to focus on today?"
In other words, what are you voting for with your time and energy? Choose the handful of items that matter today. For me, I have 10 minutes of journaling, 10 minutes of reading, 20 minutes of working out, 50 minutes of deep work on my personal projects, and 8,500 steps. I don't hit all of them every day, but I try not to end days on "zero," and the days I hit all of them are consistently great days.
Ask "How does this serve me?"
When problems arise, pause and ask: How can this obstacle serve who I'm becoming?
Reinterpret the interruption as building. Choose to act from one aspect of your values, character, essence, or virtues. Is it a chance to be creative? To be kind? To practice setting boundaries? To build strength? To stay curious?
As the writer Richie Norton puts it: "Decide who you want to be, then act from that identity immediately." By doing so, you're transforming the problem into something that serves a higher good, either for yourself or for others, acting and building toward what you care about.
This morning, I started my day at zero balance. I meditated (while I was distracted for the majority of it, that's still a credit). Wrote for 25 minutes (that's a credit). Sent an email to a student at my old college struggling with the decision to do a PhD or not.
None of that felt like paying down a debt. Those actions built toward the person I'm choosing to become: someone who writes consistently, who shows up for people, who protects time for what matters.
Tomorrow, the work will still be there. Unfortunately for me, the problems will keep arriving. The to-do list will regenerate, reshape, and reform. But I won't start underwater, already drowning before the day even begins. I start at zero. And everything I choose to do will be building credit toward the person I am, the person I hope to become, and the people and causes I care about.
What's one thing on your to-do list today that you're choosing because it serves who you're becoming?