The Stress List

I’ve been stressed out for months and I couldn’t ever quite put my finger on the cause. The kind of stress that I feel in my chest. It’s been driving me crazy.

So recently, I started a Stress List. It’s similar to my Suck List, but for stressful things:

1. I wrote down everything I could think of that was stressing me out, until I ran out of stuff to write.
2. Since then, whenever I find myself stressing about something new, I add it to the list.
3. Every morning, I pick the thing that’s stressing me out the most and move it to the top of the list.
4. I have to make some progress on making that thing less stressful that day.

It’s still early, but it’s like magic so far. Just writing it all down lowered my stress from an 7/10 to a 3/10. And I know that shouldn’t be a surprise. That’s the whole point of GTD: get it out of your head and onto paper! But it never clicked for me until now.

Plus I’m guaranteed to always be making progress on the most stressful thing. Beautiful.

If you feel vaguely stressed and you can’t figure out why, try making a stress list.