22 for 22 Wrap Up and Christmas Isn’t a To Do List or a Deadline

Christmas as a Deadline, Not a To-Do List

A quick check-in on two things today: a wrap-up of the 22-for-22 list, and a cautionary reframe on treating Christmas as a deadline.

Checking in on the 22-for-22

Back in episodes 36 and 37, I introduced the idea of a 22-for-22 list, borrowed from Gretchen Rubin, as a more forgiving alternative to a New Year’s resolution. It had been gathering dust for months by the time I dug it back out, which is exactly how these things go for us, you set it, forget it, and then discover later how much actually got done without you tracking it in real time.

I had two lists, one for work and one for home, each with 22 items. On the work list, I fully completed eight and made partial progress on six more, 14 out of 22. The teacher in me wants to call that a 66%, not exactly an A. But 66% further along than if I’d made no effort at all is genuinely something to celebrate, and there were almost certainly things I accomplished that never even made the list because I wasn’t consciously tracking them.

My home list did better: 13 fully completed, five partially done, and two decided as no longer applicable, either because priorities shifted or the timing just wasn’t right. Counting those “no longer applicable” decisions as tackled too, since deciding not to do something is still a decision, that’s 20 out of 22, a 91% completion rate.

The real lesson in a pending list

A pending list isn’t a to-do list. It’s a place to drop ideas without obligating yourself to complete every single one. Tackling an item can mean you finished it, it can mean you made a conscious decision it wasn’t the right time, or it can mean you realized it wasn’t as important as you’d originally thought. All three outcomes count as tackled.

Now, about Christmas as a deadline

Right now, if you celebrate, Christmas probably feels like a to-do list crammed against a hard deadline. The deadline part can actually work in our favor, our brains genuinely shine under urgency, so if that surge of last-minute dopamine has you knocking things out even if it’s driving the more linear people around you a little crazy, ride that wave, it’s working.

But the to-do list part is where the stress creeps in, especially if you’re trying to force it into a rigid, linear structure instead of a flexible pending list. Push through the chaos if you need to. But here’s the real ask: when you wake up on the actual day, whether you went to bed exhausted at 2am on Christmas Eve or not, try to leave the to-do list and the deadline behind entirely. It’s not a deadline anymore once the day arrives, it’s an event. Be present in it. Whatever didn’t get finished will settle itself out the way it always does. There will be a moment where you notice something you wish you’d done differently, let it go and stay in what you actually have in front of you.

If this season is hard for you

If it’s a difficult time of year for other reasons, loneliness, grief, hard circumstances, find whatever helps you get through it, whether that’s helping someone else, volunteering, or losing yourself in a good book or movie that has nothing to do with the holiday at all. Being present in your moment doesn’t require it to look like everyone else’s version of the day.

Your practical, actionable step

If you’re mid-crunch right now, let the urgency carry you through what still needs doing. But decide ahead of time that once the actual day arrives, you’re setting the list down and staying present in the event itself, not the deadline.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.