Wedding Blog
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
George Bernard Shaw
Irish dramatist & socialist (1856 – 1950)
With nine days to go, I’m ready to unveil my super-duper effective prioritization technique, the one I use when “if I remember it it’s important” isn’t working (hi, I forgot to order flowers!): Sooner or Later.
I have a thousand things floating in my head, and I find myself feeling frazzled and unable to get anything done because I’m trying to get everything done. Every bridal site and magazine tells you to make lists, but none of them tell you what to do with them. Looking at a to-do list a mile long doesn’t make me feel better, it makes me feel worse. And if I try to put a schedule around everything left to do, I end up losing my shit because we’re behind my schedule (yea, yea, I’m a project manager by training). As Miss Meatball would say, no bueno.
{Brief aside: I hate running, and if I have to run, I’d prefer to be on a treadmill. Why? Because I cannot handle being on a track or trail and seeing how far I have to go. At least on a treadmill, a mile is just a number.}
So I have this long long list and a headache. Now what?
I divide everything into two groups (you guessed it): Sooner or Later. If it has to be done before something else, it’s Sooner. If it has to be done after something else or I can put it off, it’s Later. Keeping the categories vague keeps me from getting caught up in the finer details of my organization method. Organizing can be my main method of procrastination. 
I look at the Sooner list when I have a few minutes to do something; I review the Later list when I feel like I need to do something but really just want to feel like I’m doing something. Ha.
I’ll show you a dump of my Sooner/ Later list below. If it’s italicized, it’s in progress. Once it’s finished, I move it to another section because I get no joy from crossing things off a list (though I know some of you do).
Sooner
Later
The main benefit is the ability to ignore some stuff (like everything I have to buy, which I can do in one trip later) and get other stuff done. I use Evernote because I can access it from my phone when I’m out; the “buy” prefix helps me scan quickly when I’m on a shopping trip.
My wedding planning strategy is really about building coping mechanisms to short-circuit my shit-losing triggers, so my method may not work for you. Love to cross things off a ginormous to-do list? More power to ya. Feeling like your to-do list is growing and itching like poison ivy? Try this. It might help. At the very least, you’re giving yourself permission to NOT think about a few things, and that’s gotta be a good thing.
Any other suggestions for dealing with Wedding Planning Overwhelm?
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I like the idea of Sooner and Later, I’ve just been adding the “laters” to the bottom and the “sooners” to the top - I also categorize my shopping trips by store so I know exactly where to go in Michaels (or anywhere else for that matter) with 1 glance.
I’m one of those people who enjoys crossing things off and when its all crossed out I like the feeling of crumpling up the paper and tossing it - SCORE! *high five*
Yeah. I’m a product manager by trade. This is exactly how I would run a product launch…
Hi, Miss Cheese. My wedding must be the weekend after yours. I’m thoroughly enjoying all of your posts these days because I feel like we’re going through these last days together. I’ve also been making tons of lists. My method lately seems to be just listing the “Sooner” things at one time. The ones that I need to accomplish today or this weekend. I do get great joy in crossing them off The later things all have homes elsewhere - my knot checklist, the budget sheet with payments left to make, about 8 working google documents with timelines, etc. But I think it helps feeling somewhat overwhelmed….I work better under pressure!
OMG you need help! All that painting AND wedding stuff to boot?! Please tell me you’ve enlisted friends to come over and help! Seriously, I’d do it myself if you lived close enough! Yikes!
Just a comment on running - I, too, hate tracks. Treadmill = when I feel like stopping, I’m already back where I started. There’s not “OMG I’m so tired, I can’t possibly run 3 miles BACK home!”…If I had to run in the neighborhood, I’d probably have to call a cab at some point.
I love your reason for running on a treadmill. Hope your sooner/later works!
Cheese, this is great! I’m totally going to make sooner and later lists now.
@Chris: Aw, you’re sweet. Surprisingly, we get a lot of shit done from day to day. Even with painting and landscaping. In fact, that whole Sooner list should be finished by Sunday, if you can believe it. Sweet of you to think of me, though!
@FlipFlopBride: I feel ya! So, to keep that from happening, I always give up WAY too early. Obviously, I’m not a runner.
@jmc: Some of it might end up optional… but I’m getting pretty quick at painting.
Cheese, I so need to sort my list like this! Maybe I’ll even add a third “If There’s Time” column. :o)
I LOVE the track. . .only because that number on the hamster wheel always seems so eternally far away!!!
Ok I see you need ice cream bowls….for inexpensiveness and the colors of summer…blue like the sky green like grass etc. head to your local Dollar general (where I work as a manager). They have a seasonal line of dishes (plastic but so much fun and summery, white with all summery colored flowers and heavy duty reausable plastic). Just a thought!
This is a great entry, cheesy!! You know, I’ve also found that if there are huge, monsterous tasks on my to-do lists, it really helps to break them down into smaller action items as well. So like instead of “paint bedroom”, I might break it into “buy paint and painting supplies”, “prepare bedroom to paint”, “paint room”, and “clean up”. While it seems daunting to add four items instead of one to a list, sometimes I end up creating this mental roadblock for a larger goal because it has smaller action items nested inside it that I don’t conciously realize and prepare for. This way, if you think about the steps a larger goal entails, you can make sure you’re prepared for each seegment of it!
Just $0.02 from a fellow listmaker!
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Mrs. Cheese, Knoxville
Age and Occupation: 29, Engineering Manager
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, CAD Designer
Engagement Date: July 31, 2008
Wedding Date: May, 2009
Blogging Since: October 16, 2008
Venue: Our home and the two acres it sits on
About Me: I’m an emotional girl who loves sentimental things, parenthetical asides, and trying to do things herself. I can cook, sew, am a whiz at planning, terrible at delegating, and totally in love with my fiancé (who will be my second husband but first love of the rest of my life). For our home/ garden/ DIY wedding, we’ll be moonlighting as interior designers, home improvers, and gardeners with the help of our fabulous friends and neighbors. We can’t wait to be married, and are learning how fun getting married can be.
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