At a recent party, I was talking with a friend when a guy stepped up to chat with her. An intense conversation about software followed. I interrupted to ask him, “What do you do?”

He glanced at me and said, with no small hint of pride, “I’m a Productivity Evangelist.”

I’ll admit it. I almost laughed. I had to bite my lip so as not to spit out my wine.

In spite of the New Media use of the word “Evangelist” to describe anyone who promotes anything, it’s still a word I associate with, well, evangelists. I could see him clad in white robe and sandals marching along city sidewalks carrying a sign painted with the words, “Get More Done.”

So, here’s something I want you to know about me:

I’m not a Productivity Evangelist.

In fact, I’d like you to think about your To-Do List in a whole new light. Not just as a chronicle of crap to get done.

Think of your To-Do List, instead, as a training ground.

Since many of us have become codependents of drug addicted To-Do lists, then this idea may sound a little unproductive. But hear me out.

Your To-Do List can serve two purposes. The first purpose is to guide your actions. The second purpose also happens to be step #2 in the 12-Steps to a Recovered To-Do List. (Step 1 was in the last post.)

To-Do List Recovery Step #2: Make your list a training ground for success

Many of us literally spend our days failing as we try to keep up with an external idea of “productivity.” Even when we do complete every item on our list, we rarely feel satisfied. There’s always more to do.

When your To-Do List becomes a place where you train yourself how to win, you build momentum, rather than always trying to keep up. You train yourself to succeed by asking yourself what’s important to you. You train yourself to succeed by asking less of yourself and actually getting items done. You train your brain to get used to the feeling of accomplishment, rather than the habitual feeling of never enough. Amazingly, you’ll discover that you’re actually energized. You’ll even generate a feeling of self-trust, perhaps for the first time.

To-Do List Recovery Step #3: Let your intentions guide your To-Do List

An intention is not the same thing as a To-Do. An intention guides your To-Do’s. Intention is the big picture. (Like, the word you chose for this year.)

When you create a To-Do list, the first thing to remember is your intention. This will help you recognize the items that contribute to that intention, and those that don’t.

To-Do List Recovery Step #4: Start a Sunday evening ritual

Now, this is not a “Light candles and chant the Moolah-Mantra” ritual. This is just 10 minutes to ask yourself one question:

What are my three top priorities this week?

Limit it to three. More than three just creates Attention Splatter.

To-Do List Recovery Step #5: Make a Brain-Drain List

Some of us have Chronologic Depth Perception Illness, or CDPI. (Yes, I made this up.) CDPI means that you think of something to do, and even if it doesn’t need to be dealt with until, say, Christmas of 2010, it remains at the forefront of your brain, along with all of your other To-Do’s. There it is, needing to be done. Now. So, you put it on your To-Do list because you don’t trust that you’ll get it done unless it occupies your mind.

Enter the Brain-Drain List. A Brain-Drain List is where you simply write down every To-Do that comes to mind. From the big stuff (Write an eBook) to the little stuff (get my oil changed). A brain drain list is a place where you can put every last To-Do so you can empty your brain. You will then be able to think more clearly about your priorities.

This brings me to the Three P’s of To-Do List Creation:

To-Do List Recovery Step #6: Prioritize

This is so simple that it’s easy to forget. What is your first priority? What is most important on your list? (Important isn’t always “urgent.”) Ask yourself how important each item is to you. Let go of the ones that don’t matter (i.e., most of them).

To-Do List Recovery Step #7: Parameterize

Parameters put borders around any item that’s vague. (i.e., a writing project, an organizing project, any creative endeavor.) Assign start times and end times. Or set a goal of how much (i.e., 3 pages, 2 drawers, one verse). This way you’ll know when you’re done for the day. Otherwise, you’ll convince yourself that you haven’t done anything.

To-Do List Recovery Step #8: Pay-off

The best question to ask yourself about each To-Do Item is this: If this were the only thing I accomplished today, would I be happy with that? What is the pay-off if I do this?

To-Do List Recovery Step #9: Busyness is laziness

The Benzedrine To-Do List looks quite impressive to its creator. It lends itself to an inflated sense of self-importance. “Look at all I have to do!” This is actually lazy thinking. It covers up the fact that you don’t have the presence to sit still and define the most important (not necessarily the most urgent) things that you want to do.

To-Do List Recovery Step #10: Task it Down

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid To-Do List is a fine list of dreams to have. But the part of you that is not hallucinating needs to know how to start. It needs to break those big jobs into small do-able tasks. This is another great way for your To-Do List to become a training ground. You learn how to take a dream and make it into reality. So, if you want to sell your home, the first thing on the To-Do List would be: “Call three Realtors.” Or, “Clean out the crap in the basement for one hour.”

To-Do List Recovery Step #11: Honor your style

Some people can focus on a task and get it done in 3 hours of straight work. Some need more time to putter before they can start a project. Some people need deadlines to propel them into getting something done. Everyone is different. Honoring your style is important. Not everyone can be a Productivity Evangelist. I, for one, am a big proponent of moodling and taking long quiet walks before any act of focused creativity. Everyone has different styles.

To-Do List Recovery Step #12: Know what matters to you

This post was supposed to be up yesterday.

Know why it wasn’t?

Because instead of writing, I spent the day watching the nest by my front door to see if the baby wrens were going to fly away.

I blew off my To-Do list to watch them. I felt a little guilty and overwhelmed at the end of the day. But in the moment, I was completely present and absorbed. (They flew. It was profound.) This kind of thing matters to me more than New Media and yes, more than Productivity Evangelists.

Knowing what matters to you will guide you on those days when Life Happens. Maybe baby birds are taking flight. Maybe your daughter has a cold. Maybe your best friend is having a hard time and you take her to dinner. And maybe your inner Productivity Evangelist is holding up signs that say, “You’re disappointing us all!”

That’s okay. He’s probably on drugs too.

So, I’m on Squidoo.

I’ve got a MySpace page.

I’m on Facebook. (Just barely. There seem to be fish in my aquarium and plants in my terrarium. And I have no idea how they got there.)

Now, I’m on Twitter.

And I’m curious to hear from you. How, if at all, do you use Twitter?

I’ve been using it to pretend that my Followers are my Song Coaches. I tell them when I go write songs for my next CD. Then, I tell them when I return from my songwriting session. They hold me accountable. (At least I pretend they do. They’re probably too busy trying to figure out Facebook to pay attention.)

But as for being connected all the time to Twitter -

I can imagine no greater distraction from creative focus. (That’s just me. I need complete disconnection from the internet when I write songs.)

Seth Godin aptly called it Noise Creep.

What about you? Twitter? (Or Facebook? Or Squidoo? Hub Pages? Forums?) How do you use them?

Here’s why I ask:

During the blog conference this past weekend - as each speaker was doing their thing - the people at the tables were Tweeting about the conference. They were Tweeting each other, and all their Followers who weren’t at the conference. Opinions, descriptions, snippets in rapid fire during each presentation.

I whispered to someone “Twitter is the opposite of Eckhart Tolle.” She looked at me like I was nuts.

Maybe I am?

The laws of creativity apply to everything - not just to works of art.

The gift of practicing art is that it teaches the creator how to create, and how to be a creator. Over and over again, the artist learns the process of making things - including the obstacles that arise, the futility of forcing the flow, and the joy of allowing inspiration. This practice has been nothing less than revolutionary in my own life.

That’s because I grew up learning more about Getting than I did about Creating. And I’m not alone in that. Most of the life lessons we’ve all learned are about Getting.

We gotta get rich, get approved, get things from people, get a job, get a life, get laid, get publicity, get someone to do something, get approval, get high, get married, get a loan, get good grades, get a clue, get into college, get up, get down, get out.

Get it?

Getting is an epidemic. It makes us grab at life. It takes us out of the present moment. It makes us powerless. It forces us to manipulate our own spirits so that we can manipulate the situation. Getting requires that we use our precious creative power to get, rather than to use it for its primary purpose, which is to Create. When we misue this power, we become contorted. We block the flow. The focus is on “out there” rather than “in here.”

When we become Creators, we turn the whole thing around. Everything becomes an inside job. We experience true power. We create our lives.

One of the people in my six-week e-Seminar set her intention for wealth and money during the first week. She is now going through a huge awakening about her relationship to money and to her father. She realizes that her dad has been her source of money, and so she has spent most of her life looking to him, resenting him, and playing games with him to get her money. She never learned that there was any other way to do it.

As a beginning step, I asked her to imagine what it would feel like if she knew she could create her own money and generate prosperity for herself. I asked her what it would feel like to not need her dad’s money.

It was the first time she’d ever explored that possibility. She said it would be amazing and liberating. It would allow her to have a relationship with her dad on her own terms.

Stepping out of the mindset of Getting and into the mindset of Creating heals relationships. It will also heal your life. When you don’t need to Get things from other people (including your happiness), then you can allow them to be who they are and make their own choices. You can request things, of course. But the energy of this is very different from trying to Get something.

Think of one thing that you’ve been trying to get. What it would feel like to become a creator instead? How would your actions be different?

“With pencil and paper, I could revise the world.” - Allison Lurie

So many blogs about writing.

So much advice about writing.

So much about the craft of writing, marketing with writing, and how to sell your latest eThing through writing.

And so little about the joy of writing. Writing to write. Not to sell, woo, seduce, hypnotize, or get more subscribers to your blog. Just pure writing.

“What’s the point of that?” you might ask.

And it’s a good question.

Let’s face it. Most people want a good answer before they’ll invest. (Translation: An answer that will make money, make them more important, or give them power over something.) For those people, I don’t have the good answer. Because the process of writing daily, preferably with pen and paper, is the answer. It’s an end in and of itself.

(I know. I know. Most people aren’t too fond of those “rewards unto themselves” kinds of things either.)

I’ve been filling up spiral notebooks and journals since I was twelve. I believe that this practice gave me a jump start when I began writing songs. Now, it comes in handy when I write blogs or my e-Seminar or anything else. It’s like breathing to me. It just is. I just write.

In case you still don’t believe me, here are 11 other reasons to write everyday…

1 - Writing creates order

If you’re at all like me, then your thoughts can race. And they can multiply. And then they can race some more. And multiply some more. They become unruly crowds. I call this “brain clutter.” My friend James calls it “The United Nations.”

Then you sit down to write. Your hand can only write one word at a time, one sentence at a time. And your thoughts are forced to get in a line, wind around the velvet ropes, and wait their turn. No one has to shout at them. Writing lets them know that they will all eventually be heard. And the unimportant ones (e.g., most of them) will shuffle away. Writing creates order and helps you hear yourself think.

2 - Writing erases perfectionism

Nothing keeps us stuck like perfectionism. Many people won’t even begin something because they’re so paralyzed by having to “make the perfect choice,” or “buy the perfect gift” or “write the perfect song.”

When you write everyday, you soon learn that perfectionism is pretty funny. Word by word, you teach yourself that there’s no such thing as perfect. And you learn that how deeply you participate in the creating of something has much more effect on the outcome than does the disconnected idea of “perfect.” Perfect implies an event. Writing teaches us that there are no events, and that everything is a process.

3 - Writing connects your hands and your heart

Your hands are physically connected to your heart. Writing solidifies this connection. It’s mechanical.

I meet a lot of people who have forgotten what they want. They forgot what delights them. They’ve lost the connection to their heart. I encourage them to write. Writing teaches your heart to speak through your hands.

4 - Writing falls you in love with your life

As I write this, I’m sitting on my sofa in front of a flower arrangement made for me by my neighbor. It is wilting. My dog is sitting under the bird feeder on the deck chewing loudly and neurotically on sunflower seed hulls. I notice these things when I write.

When you write, you claim this moment. You claim your life. You fall deeper in love with it. It is all there to be inhaled by your pen.

5 - Writing revises your world

You can also re-write your world. You can tell a whole different story. There’s an exercise called “Scripting” that some people do every day. They write their ideal lives in present tense, as if it were already so. You can revise your world with your powerful imagination. This is how many children survive their childhoods.

6 - Writing engages the five senses

The smell of paper. The scritchy scrape-y sound of a pen on paper. The touch of the notebook page after a good fine-point pen has created a Braille-like indentation on it. The unmistakable loopiness of your handwriting. It’s all there. No amount of on-line marketing can give you that.

7 - Writing builds self-esteem

Brenda Ueland wrote:

“For when you come to think of it, the only way to love a person is… by listening to them and seeing and believing in the god, in the poet in them. For by doing this, you keep the god and the poet alive and make it flourish.”

When you write, you listen to yourself. When you write, you love yourself. When you write, you keep the god and poet alive. This alone will center you, strengthen you, and give you something to look forward to each day: a date with your own strong centered voice. She will begin to show up more and more throughout your day, too.

8 - Writing makes you friends with uncertainty

Let’s face it. Some days writing is choppy and heavy. It’s like roller-skating on gravel. You’ll have no idea why you’re even doing it or where it’s taking you. Some days the blank page talks back at you. Some days nothing comes at all. But you keep writing and showing up because you learn that uncertainty is not the enemy. You know that you’ll write your way through to clarity. Most people avoid uncertainty like the plague. Writing teaches you to befriend it.

9 - Writing finds your voice

When you write every day, you learn your voice. You learn your rhythm. (Even if it takes re-writing the word “rhythm” three times before you get the spelling right.) I think so many people love Twitter and texting and blogging is that they these are safe arenas where they can find their voices and delight in that process. Finding your voice is an unfolding. Your voice comes out when it starts to feel safe, when it’s allowed to just write.

10 - Writing container-fies you

When you write daily, you “container-fy” yourself. That is, you become a container. You set yourself up to notice everything. You keenly observe, you take things in, and you see the world through artist’s eyes. Your subconscious takes note. Everything is raw material. And surprising things begin to happen when you become more than just a lowly soul plodding off to work each day.

11 - Writing teaches you that this is it.

There’s no there to get to. There’s no destination. This is the bad news for the people who want to get things. It’s the good news for people who want to get it. This is it. Start where you are. Take pen in hand and write your world.

tags : writing, creative writing, creativity, blog, blogging, music, christine kane

Alison Lee has a wildly popular podcast called Craftcast. She’s all about creativity, crafting, art, music, and writing. She’s also a great interviewer. Her guests have ranged from best-selling authors like SARK to celebrated musicians like Gabrielle Roth to fabulous artists like Claudine Hellmuth. I am honored to be her guest on this week’s Craftcast Podcast. Our conversation is a lot about creativity, a little about building a career, and all about being a pioneer.

Click here to listen.