What you get done versus who you’re with

This is what it looks like for an overachiever to grow older and wiser.

Saturdays used to be for impossibly long to-do lists. I would sometimes spend an entire hour of a Saturday morning making a list of 20 - 30 projects or tasks to get done that day.

By early afternoon–when it became clear that I would not check off even a small fraction of my list–I would sink into depression and self-hatred.

For most of my life, then, I saw the great quest of my life as this: Be good enough and smart enough to get 20 - 30 projects or tasks done on one day. This was how I would measure the man that I am.

I believed my life was only as good as what I could get done.

And that’s how I remember most of my teens, 20s, and 30s.

Thank God for the maturity and wisdom of my 40s!

Yesterday (a Saturday), my to-do list had five items on it. It’s Sunday morning now and I can see that I only crossed off two of those five items. I accomplished less than half of what I wanted to get done yesterday.

In the past, I would already be heading for two hours of binge-eating Pillsbury sweet rolls and surfing prank videos on YouTube (thank God I’m not a drinker, right?).

This morning, though, I feel fine about only getting 40 percent of my Saturday to-do list done. I even feel OK that the Christmas tree is still standing in my front window. I’ve got a kitchen full of groceries (the most important item on my to-do list) and morning full of memories.

You see, I didn’t get everything done yesterday because I ended up hanging out with Tracy and playing with Daniel all morning. We ate, goofed off, talked, and wrestled on the living room floor (all three of us!).

Years from now, none of us will remember that we didn’t get the Christmas tree put away by January 6.

But we will always remember mornings like the one we enjoyed together at home yesterday.

To-do lists die every day.

Ordinary family memories live forever. They re-create themselves down through the generations.

As a recovering overachiever, the gift of maturity and wisdom is this: Life is not about what we get done; it is about who is doing life with us.

Grace and peace.