I’m sitting in the IKEA cafè with my perfect pink billet journal. It’s flu season and I’ve been juggling sick kids for the last two months, one after the other, back to back. I’ve allowed myself to tone down the ambition and find ways to relax, so I’ve been keeping my head above water. Yet I feel the need to check back in and resume my personal and professional life. I’ve jokingly asked my husband if he’d watch the girls for three hours and here I am, surrounded by wood and homey textures, enjoying the sun and some proper organising.

I don’t have a lot of active projects right now. The one thing I’ve learned while raising our eldest is that I do already have full-time job. I manage the daily rituals of keeping house, I plan, shop for and cook three meals a day, I research, organise and get involved in all of the girls’ activities. And then there’s the foundational work, mostly soft, invisible, deep work I do. I think about the values of our family and I define the principles we respect in raising our children. I read on parenting, communication, couple’s work and apply what resonates in our daily life. I call my mother-in-law to nurture a good relationship between the girls’ carers and I curate our memories so the girls know who they are and where they come from. A grand project to last for years.

Another lesson I’ve learned by trial and error is this: the longest I can cut corners is a week. I can find ways to steal some time away from my job as a mom and home keeper, order some food, spend a lot of time outside, do large batches of chores during the weekend and nothing during the week. Yet at some point my lack of presence and focus starts to show. I don’t have what I need to keep going and I need to stop and take care of the logistics of life. Even worse, sometimes I steal time away from myself and stay up during the night to work on something. Three days later my mind is flat out numb and I can just trudge through the day with a coffee cup glued to my palm. Unsurprisingly, my parenting grace and skills are nowhere to be found. I am acutely aware that I don’t want to be half the mom I normally am.

With these thoughts on my mind, I spread out all my planned projects throughout the next five years. There is barely any overlap and where there is, I choose one essential project and postpone the rest. For example, right now I’m finishing my foundational training as a psychotherapist. On the back burner I’ve got a six-month course on interpersonal neurobiology, studying for the admissions exam for my next master’s degree and helping my husband out professionally (sorry, husband). Somewhere in between is writing, a somewhat special case because I write to clear my thoughts and learn, so it’s complementary to my main project. Intermittently, I work on organising and managing our space at home, inspired by messy minimalism.

Yet, today all my experience and thoughtful principles go out the window as soon as I start writing. I’ve put everything in order and I’m about to plan out next week. I feel as if I’m having an out of body experience: I write and I watch myself writing, knowing full well that the part of me putting words to paper is doing it wrong. As soon as I see the list, I can tell it’s never going to happen. Let me share it with you.

On the surface, all of these activities are doable. On a normal day I have about two hours of uninterrupted time, while our baby is taking her afternoon nap. Each of these activities can be done in two hours. It’s a tight schedule since every break is already booked. Yet it’s not impossible. So my hopeful, flowery productive part keeps on writing.

Then there’s the me who’s lived the life of the perpetual doer. I know how it feels when actions become one and the same with personality. I am what I do, so I do and do, and do some more, and then maybe I’ll finally become someone. I remember the constant pressure to do more and the permanently elusive feeling of having done enough. The more I did, the more miserable my experience. It took me so many years of work to become aware of the rest of me and create space for me to just be. To feel, to experience, to just exist. And I know these facets of my being need their space permanently, they’re not one time projects or on-and-off activities. And they hold critical weight when I sit down and evaluate my wellbeing.

Between the two parts of me I knew this list doesn’t honour my wellbeing. Instead, it’s a crockpot for internal pressure, guilt and shame. It sets me up for failure, which in itself isn’t a catastrophe. Worse, it is designed to transform my days into difficult, miserable experiences. And feeling good about myself and about living my life is the centre of my understanding of wellbeing.

Let me break down the practical issues that disconnect my plan from my reality. First, this list is based off on the assumption that everything will go smoothly. Our eldest will be in daycare, our youngest will sleep every day. There is no room for the highly probable: it’s flu season and our eldest will catch a cold and have to stay at home (that’s exactly what happened). Even if things would go as planned, the list requires constant, daily upkeep of energy and focus. If I’d have one off day when I wouldn’t be feeling at my best, then that’d mean automatic failure to stick to the plan (ironically, I was not at my best every single day of that week). There’s no leeway in this plan for any delay or change, and this is what makes it such a potent source of pressure. It’s too damn hard to live up to this list. Even more disappointingly, I’m the one who’s created it, so why can’t I live up to my own expectations? Hence, internal pressure, the kind that’s harder to counter, a part of my own mind and not a palpable enemy outside of me.

I close my journal, convinced I’m not even going to look at this list again. I feel as though I’m doing myself a favour. At the same time, I’ve failed myself. Planning is my method of making sure I do what matters to me, that I grow through these small, daily actions which can fit into my life right now realistically. I know I need a better process to stop myself from repeating this mistake. Here are some questions I intend on using next time.

Reality-checking your to-do list

• How much time would each activity on your list take?
• What resources do you need to do each task? What are the minimum conditions required that’d allow you to finish each activity?
• What could go wrong? If it does, what’s first thing to go off your to-do?
• What is truly essential and urgent? If nothing else goes well, what, if anything, will give you peace of mind?
• Can you go slower? Can you cut down on this list and create space for other experiences, not of doing, but of being?

I hope these questions help you give yourself grace. If the pressure’s too high, you can always switch back to a running to-do. If nothing else works, feel free to write me a message, I’d love to learn more about your challenges and troubleshoot together.