Checking Things Off

I am a very to-do list driven person. Basically, if I don't write something down where I will constantly see it, I won't do it. Because this has bitten me in the past, I also obsessively check my to-do lists and mentally reorganize them constantly.

My problem lately has been the proliferation of the lists themselves. I have my checkbook spreadsheet, which is more or less my financial to-do list. It tells me when to pay bills, when to transfer money to savings, whether I am hitting goals or not, etc. I also have my Google Calendar, which has my social/work to-do list. (Birthdays, meetings, etc.) Then, for things that have no definite date associated with them, I have just a plain to-do list on my Google homepage. This is for stuff like "Get Insurance" and "Call about KPERS rollover." Finally, to top it all off, I have a legal pad full of programming to-dos. Actually, I have four of those, two at home for different things, and two at work (again for different projects).

So, with all these different modal lists running around, it's easy to ignore one or two for a while. This is what I was doing to my no-definite-date list. I finally remedied that a bit this week by checking off the two highest priorities. First, I got some health insurance. Second, I called AT&T to sort out my cell phone.

I had various issues with my cell phone all happen at once. First, the phone itself refused to charge, and eventually went dead. Second, I really wasn't using it enough to justify $50 a month. Third, the fact I had to pay for text messages sent to me by others just really bothered me.

So I called the other morning ready to pay the stupid termination fee (which I regard as rather like extortion) and cancel my plan. I had been putting this off for some time, but I got another bill (for a month during which my phone was dead in a drawer), so I decided to finally deal with it. The cancellation lady was very helpful however, and solved all my issues rather nicely.

First, I found out I could move my phone to my parent's family plan without a fee. This means my monthly cost will shrink from $50/mo to about $20/mo. Second, I added a block to my line which prevents me from getting any text messages. Third, she is sending me a new phone in the mail to replace my broken one. Since I was still under the one year warranty, it's all free of charge.

Amazing what can get done when I stop avoiding the issue.

And now that I have articulated my to-do list issues, I would like to think of a way to consolidate a bit. I'm thinking some kind of consolidated calendar meets checkbook, if I can figure out an easy way to interface with it. Hell, maybe I'll finally have an interesting project with motivation to finish. (To add to my huge list of ideas that I currently am not working on.)