The Frustration List
I bet you have one.
All those small, medium, and massive things you’re not satisfied with.
The stuff you feel you need to “fix” to finally get it together.
To feel caught up.
Proud.
At peace.
A client shared their list with me the other day.
I’ve got mine too. Let me give you a peek,
“My business, career, and impact need to level up so I can proudly say what I’ve built.
My desk is chaos, paper - notes, notebooks - pieces of unfinished, or to-start projects.
I don’t feel I show up for family and friends the way I want to.
My phone is embarrassing. I keep putting off getting a new one.
I need to take care of my teeth.
I need better systems for serving my clients.
I probably need a lot more time to figure out AI at work and in life.
My style needs a refresh.
My Italian learning? I barely touch it these days...."
You know what I mean, right?
There’s never enough time, energy, money, bandwidth to fix it all.
And there never will be.
Even that person who looks like they’ve got it all figured out?
They’ve got a list too.
So what do you do with it?
Try to erase your frustrations with discipline?
Meditate them away like a Zen master?
Ignore them until they boil over?
There’s a better way.
Here’s what I learned from researchers of well-being and meaningful productivity,
You write it down.
All of it.
One frustration after another, your own frustration list.
I promise, you’ll feel lighter just from that.
Then you go one by one and ask.
“Is this a burden I can let go of?
“Or is this something I actually want to do something about?
The truth is, you can’t do it all.
You never will.
And that’s okay.
Life doesn’t need to be perfect.
You don’t need to meet all your high standards.
You just need to keep moving toward what actually makes life feel meaningful to you.
Time to work with your calendar:
-
Pick one thing.
-
Put it on your calendar.
-
Not to solve the whole damn thing. Just to start.
My teeth probably need a whole dental strategy,
But for now?
A check-up is a good first move.
You can even just schedule time to think.
Plan how you’ll move forward.
That counts too.
Step by step.
Day by day. Inch by inch.
That’s how change happens.
That’s how a meaningful life gets made.
As David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, puts it,
“Your head is a crappy office.”
And he’s right.
Well-being researchers agree,
One of the worst things you can do for peace of mind is trying to keep everything in your head.
Time to write that list ✍️
