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Writer's pictureCharlotte Frost

There's habits, and then there's

regimented, where one chooses a lack of daily freedom.

All this every day?

I love using the app Notion. It gets me very quickly to just about anything going on in my life. I'm a member of a Facebook user's group, and it amazes me how often people express dissatisfaction with the program, because they're trying to create all sorts of layered functions that feed into each other and are very complex.


A lot of people use Notion to track habits. It's appalling sometimes, when they share a screen grab, at how involved their daily habit lists are. How does one ever have any time left to simply... live?


Years ago, when I had a real job, I had moved into a different office. A fellow employee poked her head in the door to chit chat. Then she looked at my new bookcase and said with humor, "I like how orderly you have your bookcase." I had the tallest books on the left, and the remaining books in height order, down to the shortest one on the right. Without needing to think about it, I replied with equal humor, "Yes, I like to control my bookcase so it doesn't control me."


I remember that moment because I came to realize that the motivation behind having any sort of list or organization is to assert control. Many feel they are hapless victims of life, merely reacting to people and events, and so deciding for ourselves what we want to do can often be the first step to feeling empowered.


That all works, for many, up to point. But it's one of those benefits that can quickly turn into a detriment. It's easy to get carried away with all the things one thinks they "should" do in a day, or that they wish to make into a habit so they no longer have to remind themselves.


When I was in college, I was a student worker for the Library Instruction Librarian, who taught a lot of foreign exchange students how to use the library. She was extremely task-oriented. Took notes on every little thing. Always consulting her calendar, so it would tell her what to do next. She had indicated that her daily regiments spilled into her home life. Out of curiosity, I once asked her, "Do you ever do anything just for yourself? For pleasure? Like read a book?" She efficiently replied, "Yes, but I have to have it scheduled in."


I felt sorry for her.


I'm very good with details, and I like compiling them for things that bring me pleasure. I do lists and spreadsheets when I want to grasp something with a single glance. But as intriguing as I've found various calendars and planners and related apps, I've long been wary of such things becoming a self-made prison--- when, in fact, they're supposed to provide freedom from worrying that one is forgetting something.


It's ironic how one can look for freedom in a list or app and instead be choosing bondage.




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