The Infinite To-Do List

When there's a lot to do & no obvious place to start

I have a novel coming out this fall, which means I’m in Publicity Mode. You might think that Publicity Mode means posting about my novel on social media, pitching essays and articles, getting interviewed on podcasts, dropping galleys down the chimneys of various media people, and arranging high-end catering for various hip book tour events.

But Publicity Mode, for me, thus far, has consisted of the following steps:

1. make lists of all the essays, articles, interviews, podcasts, events, etc. I should be pitching

2. go into a panic spiral

3. make more lists

Here’s the problem with publicity: there’s no such thing as too much. How much publicity should you do for your debut novel? Literally as much as your body and brain can withstand. If I placed 10 essays in the lead-up to pub day, my publishing house would be thrilled. If I placed 10x10 essays, my publishing house would be 10x as thrilled.

When a to-do list is infinite, it’s hard to motivate yourself to check boxes off that list. “Oh good, I did two of the things on my list. Just infinity left to go!” In fact, checking boxes just reminds you of the infinity of other boxes you maybe should have checked instead, or maybe you checked the right boxes but in the wrong order, or maybe you should be checking all boxes at all times. More hands! More pens!

I think publicity is particularly tricky in this regard, but there are plenty of endeavors in the writing world that feel infinite. How many short stories should you write and publish? As many as you can. How many revisions should your novel go through before you send it out? As many as it needs. How big of a platform do you need to impress editors at traditional publishing houses? Bigger is always better.

It’s thankless work, plugging away at an infinite endeavor. So today’s post is for anyone who, like me, gets less done the more there is to do. I’m going to talk about some ways that I’ve been trying to wrangle infinity (in my case, publicity efforts for a debut novel) into a manageable, humane, and finite to-do list.

The Monthly Quota

I know this sounds distastefully corporate, but hear me out.

The quota is not a list of everything you dream of getting done this month. (Finish the novel! Find an agent! Sell the novel at auction for $1.2 billion!) The quota is about identifying the minimum you have to get done to placate your boss (aka: you). As long as you meet your quota, no one can get mad at you—not even you.

I came up with this method because I kept beating myself up for not doing enough. Except I had never actually defined “enough.” I just always felt sure that I was falling short of it.

So I decided to treat my writing like a job, with a (reasonable!) quota that I had to meet every month. If I met the quota, I was in the clear, no further expectations. In this way, I distilled the infinity of my ambitions into a few things I had to do every month.

There are two key components to this method.

One: your quota has to be concrete and under your control. Do not put “publish a story” on your monthly quota. You can’t control that. Instead, try “submit 1 story” or “submit to 5 journals.” Whatever your goals are, translate them into concrete attempts you can make. At the end of the month, you should be able to count them up.

Two: create the quota on a day when you’re at rock bottom. Don’t create the quota on a day when you’re riding high and full of optimism and energy. “2,000 words a day? I could definitely do that!” No. Wait until a day when the thought of stringing two sentences together fills you with dread. “If I could only write just five pages every month… just five pages!… I would feel so at peace with myself…” you’ll think longingly. That’s great—that’s your quota. This isn’t about setting the bar high. This is about setting the bar at “I can live with that.”

I’ve been doing this monthly quota thing since the start of January, and it’s been surprisingly effective. One of the items on my quota: release new music every month. Guess how many singles I’ve released in the last three months? Three! Guess how long it had been (pre-quota) since I had released any music? Three years!

Of course, I haven’t yet figured out how to integrate publicity for my novel into The Quota, since the publicity effort kind of changes month by month. But at least in principle I know that The Quota works for me.

The When/Then

One of my greatest inventions, the When/Then is a to-do list you can resort to when there are lots of things you need to get done—but other people are holding you up.

You want to revise that story, but you’re still waiting on a friend who promised to give you notes. You want to submit that application, but you haven’t heard back from one of your references. You want to blast the news about your debut novel far and wide, but you’re not allowed to reveal the cover yet. (Even though it’s a really cool cover.)

The combination of lots to do and can’t do it will make you scattered and anxious and crazy. You’re fizzing with energy that you can’t use. You know what you can do? Make a when/then list.

• WHEN my friend gets back to me with edits, THEN I will:

  • complete final revision of the story

  • update journal spreadsheet

  • send story to 5 journals

• WHEN the cover of my debut novel is revealed, THEN I will:

  • update my website

  • post on social media

  • contact bookstores re: setting up book tour

  • create fun graphics using color scheme of cover

Two things you will notice if you set up a when/then list:

One: It makes you feel better. You can’t speed up the thing you’re waiting for, but you can prepare to spring into action as soon as it happens. You might have decision paralysis now, but you won’t have decision paralysis then!

Two: Some of the items on the when/then list could be done… now. You don’t actually need to wait for the cover to be revealed to create those fun graphics. You don’t actually need to wait for your friend to send edits before you update your journal spreadsheet. You’ll find that scattered throughout the THEN are plenty of minor tasks that you could actually take care of in advance.

Two-Dimensional Chess

This method is less tried-and-true than the others, because I came up with it three days ago. But I have felt more efficient and less manic these last three days than usual. Coincidence? Probably not!

The more complicated my literary attempts get, the more I fixate on “category” of effort. I’m trying to do all kinds of things at once, but if I can just keep them contained to their separate categories, maybe I can keep track of them all. There are my fiction efforts. There are my nonfiction efforts. There are my publicity efforts, which I count as separate from my fiction efforts because they feel different. There are my musical efforts. There are my teaching efforts.

Does it help to have all these categories of effort? Well—I’m excited about all of them. I’m glad that I don’t have all my hopes resting squarely on “fiction.” But it also makes me feel a little overwhelmed to have not only an infinite to-do list, but infinite branching to-do lists.

So then I decided (three days ago) to think of all these efforts as pawns on a chessboard. My job, every day, or week, or month, or whatever, is just to move each of the pawns forward. I don’t have to checkmate the king with them. I just have to make sure each of the pawns keeps moving, in turn, up the chessboard.

This visualization helped me because moving each pawn “one square” felt so much more manageable than thinking about where I wanted them all to end up. The end of the game is far away. (Also, it’s not even clear what “checkmating the king” is a metaphor for.)

At the start of the work week, all I have to do is figure out what “one square” looks like for each of the pawns. Voilà: a short, approachable to-do list that keeps all my efforts moving along apace.

Literally Do Anything

How about this: before you’re allowed to make another to-do list, you have to do something, literally anything, off your last to-do list.

Just pick something at random and do it. For example, me: today I decided to “write new substack” instead of generating another frantic to-do list of publicity tasks.

Was that a good use of my time? Well… my monthly quota includes “send out 3 substacks.” So in that sense, I guess it was.

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Does anyone else out there get paralyzed by an overlong to-do list? Has anyone figured out a sensible amount of effort to put into book publicity? Should I have made it clear above that I do know how to play chess and I realize it’s not just an endless march of pawns but I didn’t want to make the metaphor too complicated?

Thanks for reading—stay sane out there!