Breaking the OCD Tendency for List Making

List making is an important part of the organization skills of many working adults. For most, the use of lists is important to ensuring specific tasks are done and completed before the end of the day or even the end of the week. If you are a person who makes lists of lists, then you may actually be in a state of obsessive-compulsive behaviors that can be indicative of a mental health complication that may need to be addressed.

With our busy lifestyles, making list after list is necessary to keep us focused and driven to complete certain events during our day and during our week. But, for individuals who have a tendency to suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder, OCD, the tendency to make lists of lists can actually hamper the process of achieving goals and may cause you to actually get nothing done at all. If you are struggling with this type of OCD, it is important to find ways in which you can break the habit of making too many lists and to find the right balance in your list making needs.

To break the habit of making too many lists, it is imperative that you consider stopping the list making process altogether – but only for a short period of time. If you find that you need to make a list, only do so to make lists of things that you know you will forget at some point. If needed, ask someone in your family, or someone at work, if they think you need to put the item on a list. Often, by enlisting other people, you can engrain the item into your short term memory and then you will find that list making is not needed so much after all.

In terms of OCD, most individuals who make lists are individuals who have developed a fear or phobia about forgetting something. At some point in your past, you may have been reprimanded severely, or repeatedly, for forgetting things that were seemingly important. Ultimately, the OCD tendency develops as this fear is only compounded and made worse by even more reprimands or failures to remember. It is important, therefore, that you find ways in which to remember items on a list by using other forms of memorization techniques beyond list making.

Once the habit of list making is broken, you will find that your life will become far more productive and, ultimately, this will help you to achieve more goals and lists may not be as necessary overall. While making lists is always a good idea to keep your life on schedule and to achieve specific things throughout a day or week, when you are making lists of lists, then there is an OCD tendency that needs to be address for your mental health.

Sources: Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, by Jonathan Grayson, Ph.D., pp. 179-180.