We Still Don’t Get Things Done

When I'm really in the zone I'll skip the break and keep going. Then I'll take ~15.

Really, it’s the same sort of problem that is described in The Goal and The Phoenix Project, but on a personal level. Calendar timeboxing feels like a solution that actually addresses the real problem, although it is challenging to implement for people who are low in conscientiousness (or have ADHD).

I feel it does help me combat feelings of low productivity and/or worthlessness at least a little when I can look back on all I've completed. Otherwise it's more of this vague impression of 'not enough' and the resulting general malaise which can all too often become a tar pit.

1. Principles - why you do a thing

2. Benchmarks - what defines success and failure at making the thing

3. Mediums - how thing is made

The starting point - the review - is often to-do list like. The to-do list's function is mostly taken care of within five minutes of heading out the door for a walk with out-loud self-talking: "So, yesterday this happened. And I want to do this today." Verbalizing it(while a bit surprising to passerby) makes a huge difference because it does the "getting it out of me" function that all these apps do, and then lets the thought disappear into conversation without a List of Shame forming.

But the thing I say I want to do is usually defined in terms of medium(the specific actions I take or techniques I will be using). If I agree I can drill down to specifics until I've designed an exact step-by-step process. If I disagree with that it's going to happen that I loop around to either the principle(is there a good reason?) or the benchmark(am I measuring the goal correctly?).

Blockage can usually be identified by pointing to one part of the cycle that doesn't work. I have to get all three parts to cohere for an action to matter. So I will have days where I act and then learn that the benchmark is wrong, thus needing to throw away the result but getting a little bit closer to coherent design.

All of this happens outside the formal workplace, mind. The principles and benchmarks of the business, after all, are independent of my own. But it pushes me to find useful perspectives and get away from hours-on-clock production, which I needed to do when I started working for myself. I've ended up with all my income deriving from investment, which could also be seen as "cheating the system". I actually worked backwards from the outcome(hmm, somehow that happened) to what made it happen(identifying and refining how I operate). When I do the analysis it's really clear that the times of my life that were most stressed were the ones where obligations made me act, act, act without being able to go through the loop, so now I'm trying to apply it more consciously.

Maybe the point of writing them down is mostly reflective; to contextualize them as much as possible and do the ones that we find most important by some unconscious heuristic. That means there will always be uncompleted things.

Also we have to see when we itemize things to do, we also objectify ourselves as a doer of those things. Which is OK for making things graspable, but ultimately we are not mere doer of things, we are humans in an existential context.

Maybe it is a good thing that we left todo items unchecked, maybe that is our protest against being reduced too much, maybe that procrastination is an attempt at gaining our humanity back, maybe that resistive Netflix binge has some unconscious meaning that needs to be honored.