To Do Lists, A Rant
Written for Current Affairs' "Nom De Plume" April 22nd, 2025 @ The Columns Hotel.
When I was an Adjunct Professor at DePaul University, I was responsible for creating 9-12 hours of valuable content for my students per week.
When I was an Executive Artistic Director at a nonprofit theatre company, if I did nothing, nothing got done.
For those of us in charge of what feels like the whole world, it’s not a matter of ‘will everything get done?’
It will. We’ll do whatever it takes.
We have a constant running to do list.
In the Fall of 2020, theatre was totally postponed, but I still had meetings from 8am to 11pm without any breaks.
Around 1pm, every day, like clockwork, I’d complain to my now ex-boyfriend about starving. Then he’d make something to tie me over, I’d eat it, and I’d return to my work vortex.
I’ll speak for myself: this constant hamster wheel of my own creation kept me feeling like I was really making progress.
In hindsight, there was so much happening around me that I missed. Those things I wasn’t paying attention to are what would have gotten me where I was going much faster.
I wish I had taken a breath to just be. When other people would come to me with ideas, I mostly said “No. My list of commitments is already too long for that.”
In June of 2023, I left my job officially at Prop Thtr after two years of working towards letting go. I immediately took my full attention and latched it onto my college professor gig. I found myself in a new hamster wheel of a similar creation.
In the Winter of 2020, I remember drinking whiskey at my lover’s house, another experimental theatre director with a comparable position of power, and I told him that I just wanted to be told what to do. I was so tired of making every single decision for my entire life. I just wanted to be told what to do.
I didn’t quite find that in that relationship, but in my last year as AD at Prop, I met a 6’2” Russian Immigrant who was up to the challenge.
For 9 months, somebody else told me what to do until he told me to get plastic surgery, and I told him never.
Then I started telling myself what to do on another level.
I started my podcast and gone were the days of trying to emulate any way of being that I had previously emulated or thought right.
My to do list got significantly shortly: identify potential guests, book interviews, record episode, store them somewhere. Rinse. Repeat.
My hyper fixation on doing the best work I possibly could transferred over to DePaul as soon as Prop was gone, but in the background, I was workshopping a completely new way of operating.
Two years later, DePaul had to go, and my new life had to finally officially start.
In the first few months of working full time for myself, I struggled to find an approach to a ‘to do list’. I got fancy software for project management. I’d make sure I was always working 12pm to 8pm as if it were a 9 to 5. Then I did an interview with Aimee Mcnee, an extremely successful independent writer over in England who built her following completely online.
She went through her ‘to do list’ with me.
1. Follow your gut.
2. Write 30-45 minutes a day.
3. Create something. Then post it.
4. Rinse and Repeat.
I started taking my photoshoots seriously as real work. I started taking how I get ready for the day as a crucial component of my job. I wrote on a notecard: “My presence is my most valuable currency.” I stuck it where I could see it every single morning.
By keeping it simple, I see so much more of my daily activities as honest to God work. It turns out… Sending and receiving emails isn’t the only proactive time.
What is MY to do list now? You’re probably wondering.
1. Follow my gut. Never hesitate.
2. I only commit to meetings or correspondences that I’m 100% hell yes to.
3. Post two new episodes of The Future of Art in America, a new models podcast every Wednesday.
4. Pay my rent. Pay my people.
5. Take care of myself.
My ‘to do list’ is not a reflection of how I think things should be done, or how they’ve been done according to someone else.
My ‘to do list’ is just enough structure, so that I’m pouring consistently into the projects and relationships I want to nurture.
When I was an Executive Artistic Director at a nonprofit theatre company, if I did nothing, nothing got done.
As host and producer at The Future of Art in America, a new models podcast and CEO at Olivia Lilley LLC., that remains true, but somehow, I’m having a much better time.
I see every experience I have; however, I’m using my time day or night for work or for my personal life as being of value to me and what I’m trying to accomplish here.
Enjoying what I say 100% yes to is never a waste.
Knowing what to say ‘no’ to is the most crucial skill I must continually scrutinize and cultivate.
I’m no longer giving something my 120% out of duty.
For those of you who have contentious relationships with your to do lists, what needs to go away?
What do you need to make space for?
What’s really going to be important to you ten, twenty, thirty years from now?
What will you remember?
2022 was the year that all I wanted was for other people to tell me what to do.
2022 was the year I learned how to receive what others have to give. It started me out on the journey of figuring out what actually felt good to me.
If I had never been brave enough to give up control, I would never have been brave enough to move to New Orleans by myself with basically absolutely nothing to lose.
Lucky for me, long ago, I set that ‘to do list’ aside in search of a new one.
One that would make living my life much more than a series of tasks to be completed.
And I’d argue that now I get so much more done.
Even writing this was on my to do list over the weekend, and it got done exactly how it was supposed to.
What will 2025 be for you?
