Want To Declutter Your Brain? Cross Something Off Your 'Needle List'

If you’re anything like me, you have a running list of smallish tasks piling up in your head at all times: make an appointment for your annual physical, return that shirt you ordered online, drop off that bag of clothes to donate. Many of them don’t actually take much time to complete, and yet I put them off for weeks or months at a time. All the while, they take up an inordinate amount of real estate in my brain and just nag at me.

Serena Wolf, a chef and the author of “The Dude Diet,” dubbed these little to-dos we’re prone to procrastinate on the “needle list,” which she has talked about on her Instagram.

″[They] live rent-free in the back of my mind and just NEEDLE me on a daily basis,” Wolf wrote in a post explaining the concept.

A number of her followers reached out and told her that they, too, had needle lists hanging over their heads, they just never had a name for them. When I came across the concept, it immediately struck a chord with me. For four months, I had been meaning to ask my dentist’s office for an itemized receipt to submit to my flexible spending account for approval. When I finally did it, the whole process probably took me about 15 minutes.

Wolf told HuffPost that she’s had a needle list for her an entire adult life, but she didn’t start referring to it as such until a year or so ago.

“I will put off sending a text or making a phone call for weeks for no particular reason,” she said. “I know the text or call will only take maybe 30 seconds, and yet I just won’t do it. Instead I’ll put it off, and it will bounce around my brain for weeks, gently pricking me. It’s frustrating but a seemingly very common pattern of behavior.”

Tasks on a needle list are typically personal (i.e., not work-related),