Everything I do, almost, gets filtered through and propelled by the most magical thing in my day-to-day life: the to-do list. These simple lists are fascinating because they’re the bridge between the real world and the Land of Pretend. They have supernatural powers. And they’re this week’s Specific.
Interestingly (to me), understanding the awesome power of the to-do list was beautifully expressed by something very, very dumb I read this morning, on LinkedIn. The post was about some kind of sexual harassment dustup among content design (don’t ask) people, and it contained this gem: Feelings aren’t ever wrong. They’re just feelings.
Wait, what?
Feelings are almost always wrong. Anyone who’s ever been around six year-olds knows this. They cause things like war, hair metal, bad architecture, murder and literally endless, infinite butthurt. Feelings are why we need a legal system, psychiatrists, adults, zip ties and in my case, a to-do list.
It’s very early Monday morning. I can hear cars rolling by on the road. Koda is making dog noises down there on the carpet. There’s a cup of coffee, about half-finished, sitting on the desk. My desk is an old, very heavy Ikea dinner table from back in the days before Ikea discovered particleboard. It contains, among other things, a set of noise-cancelling headphones. A length of shoelace I’ve been using to practice the Perfection Loop for fly-fishing. A twenty-dollar bill. A pamphlet on nonviolent communication. A soy candle that, when ignited, smells like “Cuban Tobacco” – and actually, kind of does.
I need to charge that Bluetooth speaker. We killed the battery last night watching Dune.
And my to-do list. Written on a little notepad is the plan for the day. It’s the most important thing on the desk.
My entire working life revolves around a simple, kind of embarrassing fact: if it’s on the to-do list, it gets done. If it isn’t, it may or it may not. The simple act of scrawling a few words down on paper changes, as they say, everything. And it works by managing my feelings.
To-Do Lists Are Magic
Envision it this way. You wake up in the morning. You have a day, a week, a month, the rest of your life ahead of you. You have an idea of what you’d like the future (Then) to be like, which presumably will be different, and better, than the present (Now). For instance, you’d like to light the grill and have it nice and hot to grill that delicious swordfish that’s in the fridge. Unfortunately, you’re out of propane.
Whether Then is supposed to happen in an hour or a decade or just sometime before you die, at this point, it’s still only an idea. It’s the Land of Pretend. To make something actually happen – to create Then -- you need to do things before Then arrives. What? How? How do you make sure they actually happen? How do you ensure that all the stuff that should occur, occurs?
Collecting kindling on the morning walk has worked really well. I should bring that red backpack, and carry it with me to do that. It would be a pain in the ass, but it would allow me to collect the best stuff, and carry it really easily.
We’re all lazy, we’re all distractible, we are all prone to chasing shiny objects because they’re, well, shiny. Time is going to keep passing no matter what you do. It’s an incredibly valuable, but limited, resource you’re going to keep expending, no matter what, at a steady rate until it’s gone. You know, hourglass, Sands of Time, Days of Our Lives, all that.
Two of Time’s relatives, which you may (or may not) also need to expend along the way are Effort, and Attention. The purpose of your life, then, is to use Time, Attention and Effort as effectively as possible, to create your future.
You’re welcome. Man, is it fun to tell hundreds of total strangers what the purpose of life is. This is like being Paul Atreides! I am the one who points the way!
Anyway, when it comes to deciding what to do, the sheer possibilities are sort of paralyzing. You could do anything. Or nothing. Transforming the cloud of potential tasks that floats in the air around me (and you) into results and a future is where the humble-but-mighty to-do to-do list does its thing.
Squirrel!
I’m a poster child for the to-do list because of my brain. About twenty years ago I was officially diagnosed, by a psychiatrist, as suffering from adult-onset ADD. A lot of people talk about having this condition sort of casually, as a personality quirk, or as a tendency. I’m the real deal, including medication and everything. I was into Adderall before Adderall was
Shit … Koda is lying on the carpet licking one of my hats.
Anyway. Where was I? Oh, yes. ADD. Trust me – no matter how little sleep you got the night before, a hit of Adderall and you’re going to be wide awake in half an hour. I no longer take the stuff, for reasons I’ll get into later, but the point is that I have real, no-kidding ADD.
This has manifested itself in all kinds of interesting ways, all of which are right out of the textbook.
A propensity to take risks – when I was a kid, I loved climbing water towers. Fall = die. As a teenager, I would do things like see if I could drive through a highway rest area in the middle of the night without slowing down at all. As an adult, I’ve done three venture-backed startups, and now work for myself. A normal, stable corporate/law firm job hasn’t worked out real good.
Impulsivity: I am very impulsive. I also tend to blurt out whatever pops into my head, which is not helped by my very large size, meaning that I’m not afraid of almost anyone who doesn’t have four legs. This has gotten me knocked unconscious with a bottle, and reprimanded by more than one boss. When I feel like doing something, my brain tends to give me the green light (feelings) no matter how dumb it actually is.
And finally, it is very, very hard for me to stay on one task. This made law school, which requires endless hours of studying very boring stuff (YOU try reading the Uniform Commercial Code some time), incredibly difficult. At one point, I resorted to tape-recording lectures and transcribing EVERY WORD by hand. It worked for the Japanese LLM students, so why not, right?
All of these things make it really, really easy, almost the default state, to lose focus, and have the day, the week, slip away because I wasn’t really paying attention. Working alone at home, with every possible digital distraction available at the tap of a keyboard, doesn’t help either.
I need to refill that bird feeder. And maybe clean it.
Back to the To-Do List
I’m fascinated by the impact something so bone-crushingly dumb and obvious as a list has on my life. The to-do list is my savior, my shield against the awful feeling of a day wasted. I HATE that feeling, but it’s also my natural tendency. Using the list keeps it at bay, and prevents being owned by the inherent dumbness of my feelings.
It’s really a four-part process.
Part One: When I remember something that needs doing, I write it down. Otherwise I’ll forget it in thirty seconds. The method for doing this needs to be as simple as possible – literally, a piece of paper (small notepad) and a pencil — my magic wand. Anything more complicated is going to get screwed up. This is what David Allen, who wrote “Getting Things Done” described as a trusted system for capturing things. I’m not trying to make the list. I’m just trying not to forget.
Part Two: Make the list. This is the art form. Items have to be specific – no simply writing “taxes” down. They have to be the right mix of easy and hard. The goal is to provide myself with a long enough list to be challenging, but not impossible, and with a combination of easy, sort-of-fun tasks (stack the rest of the firewood piled up in the driveway) and hard, nasty ones (work on taxes). It has to be just a little more than I can do in a day.
Part Three: Do the stuff on the list. And here’s the magic thing: the point of the list is to provide myself with a regular stream of rewards, basically like the rat in an experiment that presses the bar when the light goes on and gets a pellet. I’m both the rat and the scientist, however, because I’m cueing up my own rewards system. It’s not about being organized. It’s about developing a way to deliver a steady series of dopamine hits as motivation.
Part Four: Repeat the next day.
From ground level, this is all kind of silly. Why can’t I just make a list, get things done, and not play all these games? Why do I need to do this?
Because I know what I am like.
Feelings are Dumb
More specifically, I know that I have an extremely limited reservoir of willpower and discipline. That stuff takes a lot of energy, which I frequently run out of. Everyone does, to some degree. After literally decades of wrestling with this, I’ve learned that the best way to make sure things actually get done, and I make progress towards the Land of Pretend, is to trick myself. To make a game out of my own life. To put together a to-do list that manipulates my dumb feelings in a way that works for me
So, yes, I need to prepare and send out invoices, which I hate and avoid. I need to work on taxes and bookkeeping, which I hate and avoid. But I also need to weed-whack the pasture, which I enjoy. I need to expense a digital picture frame, which will take about one minute. I need to do laundry, which I kind of enjoy. So, like putting together some sort of brain salad, the trick is to assemble a to-do list that manipulates my own feelings, which are … dumb.
In fact, they’re so dumb that I can use them to trick myself. And as a result, the invoices get out. The laundry gets done. The dog gets walked. And I can do it again tomorrow. It works every time.
If, of course, I remember to do it.
Quite a bit that’s close to home. Remind me to converse about prepositions…
Sweet dreams after the list is created