What if you burned the pile? đĽ
Letâs play with a thought experiment for a minute. A little dramatic⌠but stay with me... đĽ What if you burned the pile? You know the one âthe mental stack of to-dos, the obligations you said yes to out of guilt, the âshoulds,â the open tabs, the DMs you havenât replied to, the 4,000 (do I hear 10,000? 30,000?) unread emails you swear youâll deal with âsomeday.â What if you piled all of it upâŚstruck a matchâŚand let the whole thing go up in flames? What would happen? Would there be anything in that pile youâd actually miss? Anything truly urgent or essential⌠OR is most of it just noise youâve been carrying out of habit? Would anything bad happen if you didnât respond, fix, finish, or follow up? Or â and this is the real question â would it feel like release? Like creating a clean slate your brain hasnât felt in years? Sometimes the reason we feel behind isnât because weâre failingâŚitâs because weâre dragging around a pile of busywork that doesnât even belong to us anymore. So today, just imagine: If you burned the pile, what would be lost? And what freedom might you gain? You donât have to actually set anything on fire (tempting as it is đ
)âŚbut noticing what you would burn tells you a lot about whatâs still worth carrying. (Thanks to @Mike Richardson for sparking this reflection by suggesting I burn my own pile lol)