A couple of decades ago, when our children were very small, my friend Linda, whose daughter was the same age as ours, had a habit of saying countless times in any given day, “If I could just sit down for five minutes!” We both had very demanding jobs, and working mothers were not yet in vogue.

I remember being eight months pregnant and lumbering across New York’s West 57th Street, struggling to keep up with my politically incorrect boss as he darted between cars. “Hey,” he said, “you got yourself into this. Keep up.” It was hard. (Still is, right?)

But Linda had a way of making it harder. On the weekends, which should have been fun, she sighed and scowled a lot and acted harried. It got to be sort of funny. In fact, all these years later, my husband, Jim, still imitates her when things get particularly hectic around our house, usually right before people are about to arrive for dinner. “Oh, my God,” he says, “if I could just sit down for five minutes!”

Here’s the thing. Linda was extremely organized. She had a lot of lists. One Saturday morning, I called her on the spur of the moment to see if she wanted to take the girls to the Museum of Natural History. “Not on today’s list,” she said. “Next week.”

We all have lists. Lists rule our lives. We have lists for shopping, lists for fixing, lists for calling, lists for spending, lists of things to pick up, lists of things to put away. Lists for doing. Sometimes I think we’re not human beings, we’re human doings.

Just think: We can have on our tombstones, "She got through everything on her list!"

We might assume that just because we’ve checked off every last item, we’ve actually done some living. We would be wrong. We could be looking down at our lists at the exact moment we should have been looking up at the trees or the stars or at someone’s wonderful face.

Well, our children grew up in a twinkling, as children do, and last summer Linda’s daughter was married. It was a beautiful, happy wedding. At one point, Linda leaned over and said to me, “Where did it all go? How did this happen so fast? Was I paying attention? Did I miss something? Did I miss a lot?” The orchestra was playing “The Way You Look Tonight.” I just smiled, gave her a hug, and said, “I know what you mean. I really do.”

Linda, like a lot of us, was all about efficiency and accomplishment. About getting things done. She never stopped. Never stopped to look up — at the trees, at the stars, at someone’s wonderful face. And the days flew by.

How does this happen? How do we go from being lovers and adventurers to becoming efficiency experts? When did we start running our lives like businesses, where measuring results — not living — is the bottom line? We spend our time looking forward to when we’re going to be happy or backward to when we were happy.

Whatever happened to now? It’s hard to connect with the special moments in our lives, or even to recognize them in the first place, when we’re so bombarded with lists of things to do. And we feel so compelled to do it all — to be everything to everyone all the time. We want to have the best-organized houses, the best-laid dinners, the best-behaved children, the most successful careers. And of course we want to look good through it all, right? Just thinking about it makes me feel like sitting down for five minutes. Actually, lying down would be better.

So what can we do? Well, I suggest we make another list. No, I’m not kidding. Another list, but this one’s different. It’s not about doing; it’s about being (see 5 Steps to Living More of Your Life on the next page).

And it won’t help you to become more efficient or effective, but it will help to make your life richer — so that you can have inscribed on your tombstone, "She was really lucky. She loved some people, and they knew it. There were really wonderful moments in her life, and she didn’t miss many."