Like many people today, I have to do lists that I often seem to measure by the foot. Sometimes I measure a successful day not by how many tasks I accomplish, or even how good a job I do in completing these tasks. Rather, I measure success by how many inches I knock off the list. I know Ive gone way off the deep end when I start comparing my to do lists with others and feeling smug when mine is longer or more intense. Somehow, Ive made having a longer to do list mean that Im somehow more important or better. Hey, everyone, check it out! Im more hooked into external measures of worth than you are! Neiner neiner neiner!!!

Recently, I got to thinking about this business of to do lists, and I decided that what I needed was a to be list. I am a human being being love, being a grandpa, a godfather, a devoted husband, lover, friend, brother, son. Im a human being alive, being present, being awake (at least occasionally) and being a writer. Notice that we dont speak of doing alive, or doing present, or doing awake. These arent tasks, theyre ways of being in the world, ways that engender more joy, more wonder, more satisfaction and peace than any amount of doing ever could (at least for me).

My suggestion is simple. Before tackling your daily to do list, take a few minutes and become present to your to be list. Fully embody the Truth of who you really are who you be. Then, out of that spacious, peaceful, awakened state of being, by all means enjoy some purposeful doing. Youll not only get a lot done, youll also have a great day.

Steve Ryals, author of Drunk with Wonder: Awakening to the God Within went from homeless and shooting drugs in San Franciscos Haight-Ashbury district at 17 to graduating from UC Berkeley on the Deans List six years later.