Your "Silent To-Do List" Is the Number One Barrier to Your Simpler Life
That thing is a killer
If you’ve never heard of the silent to-do list, let me enlighten you.
The term was coined by Japanese author Fumio Sasaki in his book Goodbye Things and goes like this:
Every item in your home and life needs to be taken care of or maintained. Each item will “signal” that to you, forcing you to create a silent to-do list in your mind.
Some examples:
Dirty dishes signal you need to clean the kitchen.
Plants signal they need watering or maintenance.
Clothes in the closet could spark guilty thoughts like why have you not worn me yet?
A cluttered desk signals you need to tidy it before getting down to work.
Dirty clothes on the floor signal they need to be washed, dried, folded, and put away.
I wrote a whole article about the silent to-do list on Medium last year and it struck a chord with multiple thousands of people.
And I’m not surprised.
Right now I’m spending a few weeks in the UK, staying between my brother's and my mother’s house. And boy, has my silent to-do list grown since being here. So much so, I am coming to the realization that the silent to-do list is probably the biggest barrier to living a simple life.
Because right now, my life feels anything but simple.
Thankfully there is a solution.
Cut the clutter, cut the list.
The less you own, the less there is to maintain
The fewer clothes you own, the less time you have to spend thinking about cleaning them, maintaining them, and ultimately throwing them out.
The fewer pots and pans you have in your kitchen, the less time you have to spend thinking about cleaning them, maintaining them, and ultimately throwing them out.
The fewer (unused) toys your kids have the less time you have to spend thinking about cleaning them, maintaining them, and ultimately throwing them out.
You get the idea.
It’s hard to understand how much this silent to-do list clogs up your brain until you don’t have one anymore.
The best example of this is vacation time. That glorious part of life when there is so little to do that you can let your mind wander.
It cooks up ideas about how you are going to better yourself when you get home. You spend less time thinking about all the chores you have to do and more time thinking about that career move you want to make.
Of course, vacations are only temporary. And you may think that it’s the time off from real life that lights up your brain in such an awesome way.
But I’m not so sure.
For the last 2.5 years I’ve lived in Airbnbs and other short-term accommodation. I still have a “real” life. I still work, do chores, go grocery shopping, and do life admin.
Yet my time - and my brain - is so much more free and easy when I live in Airbnbs.
The kitchen only takes 10 minutes to clean after dinner for instance. The lounge only needs a once-around with a vacuum cleaner every few days.
There are even fewer literal steps between chores like the time it takes to move between the washing machine and the drying rack.
And those steps add up.
It sounds silly. But as soon as I rent a bigger place with more clutter, I notice how much it triggers my silent to-do list. Even when the clutter isn’t mine or my responsibility, it still weighs on my brain.
That’s why being back in the UK isn’t very simple for me.
I’m living in houses that, whilst not terribly cluttered, are still filled with more stuff than I’m used to. I’m finding that I want to tidy or clean before I do anything loftier like writing or figuring out my life or just feeling anything other than on edge.
For instance, part of the deal with me staying with my family is that I do most of the cooking which I find so much harder on my brain here than I do when I’m in my clutter-free Airbnb. It shouldn’t be - I have so much more equipment and ingredients available to me than I do on my travels - but that’s the problem. Too much stuff in the kitchen = a longer silent to-do list.
Like I say, it sounds crazy, but take it from me, it’s not.
Clutter has so much more of a mental load on us than any of us realize.
If I’ve convinced you thus far that you need to smash that silent to-do list out of existence, here are some quick ways to start:
Declutter areas that contribute the most to your silent to-do list first
For most people, that’s likely places you spend the most time in like the kitchen, lounge, or perhaps the office.
This list of 100 items to get rid of today is a good place to start.
The Simple and Straightforward decluttering course will also come in handy here. Whatever it takes to reduce the clutter in those high-traffic areas, you’ll quickly see a reduction in your silent to-do list.
Reduce your car time
My brother lives in the middle of nowhere. There is a 30-minute drive to everything from the shops to my mother’s house and I must drive it at least twice a day right now.
That’s at least an hour a day spent in the car.
For most people, that’s nothing. Perhaps you’ve got a commute. Perhaps you too need to drive to the nearest store, to your daily appointments.
Although driving is not clutter-related it still adds to your silent to-do list because you have to spend time figuring out where you’re going, who’s taking the kids where, and when you’re going to fit in running to the store.
The less time you spend in the car - be it by working from home more, streamlining your kids’ activities, or reducing appointments - the shorter your silent to-do list becomes.
Prioritize what you love and reduce everything else
Perhaps you love those plants that fill your silent to-do list with their tending. Perhaps you’re happy to dust your piles of books because they make you feel good.
You’ll never reduce your silent to-do list completely but you can prioritize what makes the list.
And what you can cut.
Figure out where you’re prepared to do the work. Forget the rest.
That silent to-do list is more of a killer than most of us realize. It’s only once you start to reduce it that you discover how much time and headspace it occupies.
Declutter those spaces. Streamline and prioritize. Reduce the list. It’s incredible how quickly you’ll notice a difference.
The silent to-do list is probably the most important piece of the simple living puzzle. It’s only once you’ve reduced yours that you’ll discover how important its elimination really is.