Sisyphus' List

When his hand autonomously reached to snooze his phone’s 5:00am alarm, it encountered the sticky note he’d stuck on the screen the night before in anticipation of this moment. With the blurred eyes and clumsy movements of a delicate newborn, he peeled the sticky note off his phone and read what last night’s guilty conscience wrote to this morning’s beleaguered reality: “Get out of bed and get your shit together.” 

He had been unemployed for months now, and this was the first time he’d woken up before dawn since the last day of his old job. He hoped that forcing himself to wake up at a responsible hour would start him in a productive posture towards the day, which would lead to at least one completed job application. His running excuse of “not immediately applying for new jobs so that he could emotionally reset after the trauma of his old job” had long expired, and his self-respect had atrophied. There was also the simple matter of money: his unemployment payments were due to expire in a month. After a round of internal negotiations with his baser mind, he ceded to his sticky note and swung his legs out of bed.

With teeth freshly brushed and coffee made and poured, he sat down at the table to write out the to-do list for his transformational day. First, he added “brush teeth” and “make coffee” to the list, and immediately checked them off as completed. A couple easy wins would be good for his morale and hopefully generate some momentum. Already feeling more confident, he proceeded with the meat of the list – write cover letter, update resume, submit job application – and opened his laptop to face the demons that had been haranguing him for months.

He opened a blank Word doc, sat back in his chair, and mentally scrolled through his last job’s duties and his accomplishments there. However, even thinking about the positives of the job triggered Vietnam-veteran-esque flashbacks of the demoralizing interactions he had had with his old boss. Each one of these flashbacks set off a fight-or-flight response, and before he knew it, he would come to, having unconsciously fled into the safety and solace of Instagram reels. Faced with this recurring impediment, he thought it could be a good idea to engage in a less scary – but still productive – activity that might act as a sort of runway to tackling the higher priority tasks. He was a big fan of podcasts, so he thought going for a long walk while listening to one of his favorite motivational podcasters could help get him out of his head, enabling him to enter the necessary flow state for writing. Thus inspired, he put on his walking shoes, added “take walk and listen to motivational podcast” to his to-do list, and stepped out into the cool morning air.

Before he had even reached the end of the block, he was already feeling in higher spirits. It felt as if each step he put between himself and the blank Word document melted away his negative thoughts and gave him the bandwidth to focus on the motivational podcast he’d chosen. “Look at me! Taking in the morning air, pounding the pavement and bettering myself as I go,” he proudly reflected, as the podcaster’s message started to sink in. The podcaster was a hardcore former-Navy-SEAL-turned-Buddhist who advocated “annihilating attachments to your negative inner dialogue.” The podcaster’s aggressive approach appealed to him; he felt like he could use a good kick in the pants. In fact, it felt like the podcaster was speaking directly to him and addressing all of the core issues that led to the situation he was in now: he was self-victimizing in order to avoid taking accountability for what is actually in his control. The longer he listened to the podcaster, the more it felt like his problems were being solved through auditory osmosis, and he wished the podcast would never end. When the inspirational – and thorough – three-hour podcast inevitably ended, he returned to his apartment to implement the motivational techniques he had absorbed.

The podcaster had advised that the first step in taking control of your circumstances (“instead of letting them take control of you”) was to pick one area of your home that is unclean and commit to keeping it clean. The hope is that after you experience the benefits of having one corner clean, over time, the commitment will gradually but surely spread to all other areas of your life. His apartment had noticeably fallen into disarray during his time in unemployment – it’s difficult to find motivation to clean your apartment when you feel like everything is meaningless – so he had many corners from which to stage his come-back. He was tired of sleeping in an unmade bed littered with clothes, charger cables, and pizza crumbs, so he decided to clean that corner before returning to the Word doc. Accordingly, he added “clean and make bed” to his to-do list and got to work.

Smoothing the last corner of his comforter, he stood back and appreciated his fine work. “It sure is amazing what a difference it makes when the bed is made – my mind already feels like it’s more organized too,” he thoughtfully reflected. Inspired by the emotional and cognitive benefits he had manifested by simply making his bed, he could only imagine how great he would feel if he cleaned another corner of his home, so he attacked the stack of dishes in his sink that had been accumulating for several weeks now. This cycle continued, and before long, he had cleaned his entire apartment, from the threshold of the front door, to behind each and every faucet. Each clean room seemed to serve as a step out of the months-long crippling pit of self-doubt that had kept him from facing the unholy trinity of priority tasks: update resume, write cover letter, submit job application. With a sense of satisfaction, he checked “clean and make bed” off his to-do list, then added “clean entire apartment,” and checked that off too.

Armed with renewed self-determination, he checked the clock and noticed that it was already noon. The tell-tale Word doc beckoned him, and would only be silenced by words on the page: he would need to return to it soon. But after his long walk and the exertion of cleaning his apartment, he resolved to eat lunch first in order to reenergize, and then he would unleash his freshly invigorated resolve onto the task for which he’d been steeling himself. Taking his lunch to the couch, he turned on the TV, and gave himself permission to check out mentally for an hour or so given all of the great work he’d already done. After all, each episode was almost exactly 52 minutes; one episode would serve as the perfect timer while he ate.

His eyes opened and he found himself staring at the, “Are you still there? Do you want to keep watching?” prompt on Netflix. He checked the time and was mortified to realize that all his motivational steps had yielded disappointing results: it was now 8pm – he had passed out for more than six hours. He must have been exhausted after waking up so early, going for a three-hour walk, and then cleaning his entire apartment. Recognizing his familiar pattern of self-sabotage and shaking his head in disgust, he hustled straight over to the computer to try to salvage what remained of the day. But as he stared pleadingly at the blinking cursor, each blink seemed to whisper “failure” at him. His mind was so consumed by shame and inadequacy, he couldn’t formulate a single productive thought, and he found himself in the same position he’d been in when he started his transformational day.

Exasperated, he decided that he was not in a good head space to be able to tackle the meat of his to-do list, and decided to use the last couple hours of his evening to emotionally reset so that he could really dive into it tomorrow. He turned the TV back on to watch some more of his show and settled into the familiar feeling of guilt that would accompany him into yet another night of anxious sleep.

Later that night, lying in bed, he set his alarm for 5:00 am, closed the Instagram reels on his phone, and put it on his nightstand. A fresh sticky note on the screen read, “Get out of bed and get your shit together.”