There Is So Much Undone I Cannot Pick

The list is why nothing happens.

Not the individual jobs. Any one of them, on its own, on a free Saturday, would be perfectly manageable. You have done harder things than any single item on that list.

What stops you is that you cannot pick.

Because the moment you choose one, you are also choosing not to do the other seventeen, and every one of those seventeen has an argument. This one has been waiting longest. This one is the one visitors see. This one is the one your partner mentions. This one is genuinely the most sensible. This one is the one you would actually enjoy, which somehow disqualifies it.

So you stand in the middle of it, and you weigh, and the weighing takes the evening, and you do nothing. And doing nothing adds an eighteenth item, which is the feeling of having wasted another Saturday.

I want to say something about a plow, and then something you have possibly never been given permission to do.

No man having put his hand to the plow

There is a line about plowing that is usually used to make people feel worse, and read properly it does the opposite.

And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. (Luke 9:62, King James Version)

No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back.

Here is the thing about plowing that the audience knew and we do not. You cannot plow a straight furrow while looking behind you. Your hands follow your eyes. Look back, and the line goes crooked, and the field is wrecked in a way that will be visible until harvest.

So this is not a warning about being sentimental. It is a description of how the work is done: eyes forward, on the next few feet of ground, and the furrow comes out straight.

And notice what a plowman is not doing. He is not looking at the whole field. He is not weighing which part of it deserves attention first. He is on one furrow, looking a short distance ahead, and the field gets done because he is not trying to hold all of it in view.

You have been standing at the edge of the field trying to plow it all at once with your eyes.

You are able to work one furrow with the field out of view, and it has never once been possible to plow by looking at all of it. Luke 9:62 puts the eyes forward on the work in hand rather than on the whole field, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person stop weighing and start somewhere.

Some of these should be let go

Here is the permission, and I mean it plainly, because a site about finishing that never says this is lying to you.

Some of the things on that list should not be done at all.

Not later. Not eventually. They should be released.

The project you took on for a version of your life that is not the one you are in. The thing you started because somebody suggested it and you never actually wanted it. The one that made sense for a house you were about to leave, or a child who is now nine, or a hobby you have not thought about in three years.

Those are not unfinished projects. They are decisions that expired, and they are sitting on your list drawing weight every day for a job that no longer needs doing.

And nobody ever gives you permission to take one off. There is a quiet assumption that a thing once decided must eventually be done, and that abandoning it would be a small failure, so it sits there indefinitely, costing you attention.

Deleting one is not giving up. It is closing a loop by deciding rather than by doing, and a loop closed by a decision is just as closed.

You are able to release what no longer needs doing, and it has never once been a failure to close a thing by deciding. The written word puts the plowman's eyes on the work in front rather than on everything behind, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a person let something go without shame.

Cross one off by deleting it

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately not doing a job.

Cross one thing off the list by deleting it, not by doing it.

Go to the page you wrote, or to the list in your head, and find the one that should not be there. You almost certainly know which. It is the one that produces a small flat feeling when you read it, the one you would not choose today, the one that belongs to a version of your life that has moved on.

Cross it out. Actually cross it out, on the paper, with a pen, so it is visibly gone.

And do not replace it with anything, and do not do a job to make up for it. Deleting is the whole exercise tonight.

You will feel something when you do it, and it may be more than you expect. That is because the item was carrying more than a job: it was carrying an intention, and letting go of an intention is a real thing even when the intention was small.

Luke 9:62 puts the eyes on the furrow in hand and not on the whole ground, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a person crosses something out and does not replace it.

You are able to take one thing off the list on your own authority, and it has never once required anybody's permission to release it. Luke 9:62 keeps the plowman's attention forward rather than across the whole field, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with you at the table with the pen.