My secret to lockdown happiness? Stop writing lists

Some people start their day with a latte, but my morning has always begun with a list. On holiday or at home, I have been a lifelong compulsive list-maker, scribbling down aims and objectives for the day ahead on hotel breakfast menus, or the backs of brochures, on paper napkins, anything I could hastily grab in order to wrangle my unruly thoughts into submission.

Life is messy, and a written list is like a sleek Ikea storage unit for thoughts that were scattered all over the floor. No small deed was left off: everything from “eat breakfast in the sunshine” to “decide which museum to go to” was recorded. I’d even write “write list” on my list so I could immediately draw a fat line through it, feeling the rush of achievement, a delectable dopamine hit, coursing through my neurons, better than coffee.

I relied on lists not just to try to plan my day, but for a sense of achievement. Even when that achievement, as on holiday, was “fun”. Tick, done. MOMA, completed. Tapas tour, experienced. Pleasure, accomplished. Numbered lists gave me a sense of progression, of continual, tangible self-improvement. Even on holiday, I never escaped this pressure to achieve, to attain, to aspire.

Nope, it would take a global pandemic to do that. Because something magical has happened to my mornings during the past three months. I’ve stopped making lists. Before the coronavirus crisis (BC) I saw lists as a sort of road map to the day ahead, operating instructions for feeling OK about myself at 8pm, a framework without which chaos would surely ensue.

But I am no longer overstimulated, and therefore distracted. I am no longer panicked by a sense of urgency, wracked with worry that I am living a less fabulous life than my friends, my colleagues, my neighbours, or the 2,132 other people I follow on Instagram. Much of my life, for once, has been out of my hands, and I no longer have to grasp at everything with sweaty palms, terrified something vital will slip through my fingers.

So, paradoxically enough, it’s been during lockdown – when travel has been off the cards – that I’ve finally embraced a holiday mentality, doing what I feel like doing, rather than what I feel I should be doing. I abandoned the rigid linear list structure of my days, dragging myself through task after task. Instead, I’ve adopted a sort of “polka dot” pattern, sporadic blobs of activity, creativity and productivity.

Yes, I still have work commitments, family commitments, volunteering commitments and a lot to do. Interestingly enough, though, by binning my box-ticking attitude I’ve not only felt happier and more relaxed, I’ve also become more productive and creative, because I’m doing precisely what I feel like doing at any given moment.

It turns out that the secret to happiness and success is living more intuitively, impulsively, and whimsically, like Grace Jones, or Cher, I imagine. For years, I’ve been living more like her PA, barking orders at myself, ignoring what I felt like doing. If I put up some shelves because I feel like doing it, it no longer feels like a chore. Equally, if I go for a long rambling walk because it is Task #3 on my list, I turn what should have been pleasure into a chore.

To some travellers, it will seem ridiculous that I ever expected to enjoy a holiday – let alone life – armed with a hectic, high-stakes itinerary. But to a millennial mind like mine, fed with high expectations, propelled by FOMO, riddled with performance anxiety and primed to equate visible displays of achievement with self-worth, the greatest gift of this lockdown is the release of pressure.

Now, as we emerge, time is no longer in such short supply, a precious resource to fight with myself over. And lockdown life has quite enough rules without adding my own self-imposed list of demands and deadlines.

So next weekend, with campsites and hotels finally open again, I’m taking my lockdown flatmate Roxy to a campsite a half-hour drive from my home in Margate. I’ve resisted the urge to scour maps for sights and attractions and walks and historic “must-sees” nearby. My mental packing list begins and ends with “bottle of wine”. The hot tub under the stars is our only plan. And, for the first time, this is enough for me.

Because lockdown life taught me just how much joy I’ve been missing out on by inserting “shoulds” into my day, when travel, above all, is meant to be about “wants”.