-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
/
beware-the-todo-list-7faac97dae4a.html
200 lines (148 loc) · 8.4 KB
/
beware-the-todo-list-7faac97dae4a.html
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />
<meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="True" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
<meta name="robots" content="" />
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Source+Code+Pro:ital,wght@0,400;0,700;1,400&family=Source+Sans+Pro:ital,wght@0,300;0,400;0,700;1,400&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./theme/stylesheet/style.min.css">
<link id="pygments-light-theme" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
href="./theme/pygments/github.min.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./theme/font-awesome/css/fontawesome.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./theme/font-awesome/css/brands.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./theme/font-awesome/css/solid.css">
<link href="https://shanedowling.com/feeds/all.atom.xml" type="application/atom+xml" rel="alternate" title="Shane Dowling Atom">
<link href="https://shanedowling.com/feeds/all.rss.xml" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate" title="Shane Dowling RSS">
<script type="text/javascript">
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
ga('create', 'G-Z9P3V6D0SV', 'auto');
ga('send', 'pageview');
</script>
<meta name="author" content="Shane Dowling" />
<meta name="description" content="For the last few months, I've been working off a varying series of to-do lists to drive my life. I use a mix of the Things app, my bullet journal, and a calendar. Basically, my setup is to have annual Smart Goals, broken down into achievable chunks, then broken down …" />
<meta name="keywords" content="">
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Shane Dowling"/>
<meta property="og:title" content="Beware the todo list"/>
<meta property="og:description" content="For the last few months, I've been working off a varying series of to-do lists to drive my life. I use a mix of the Things app, my bullet journal, and a calendar. Basically, my setup is to have annual Smart Goals, broken down into achievable chunks, then broken down …"/>
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/>
<meta property="og:url" content="./beware-the-todo-list-7faac97dae4a.html"/>
<meta property="og:type" content="article"/>
<meta property="article:published_time" content="2018-04-02 13:45:51.323000+00:00"/>
<meta property="article:modified_time" content=""/>
<meta property="article:author" content="./author/shane-dowling.html">
<meta property="article:section" content="Productivity"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="/images/logo.png">
<title>Shane Dowling – Beware the todo list</title>
</head>
<body class="light-theme">
<aside>
<div>
<a href="./">
<img src="/images/logo.png" alt="Shane Dowling" title="Shane Dowling">
</a>
<h1>
<a href="./">Shane Dowling</a>
</h1>
<p>Platform Engineering Manager</p>
<nav>
<ul class="list">
<li>
<a target="_self"
href="./pages/contact.html#contact">
Contact
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a target="_self"
href="./pages/now-page.html#now-page">
Now Page
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a target="_self"
href="./pages/statuslog.html#statuslog">
Statuslog
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a target="_self" href="https://hybridcloudshow.com/" >podcast</a>
</li>
<li>
<a target="_self" href="https://pemonthly.com/" >newsletter</a>
</li>
</ul>
</nav>
<ul class="social">
<li>
<a class="sc-github"
href="http://github.com/shano"
target="_blank">
<i class="fa-brands fa-github"></i>
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a class="sc-mastodon"
rel="me" href="http://social.lol/@sed"
target="_blank">
<i class="fa-brands fa-mastodon"></i>
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a class="sc-linkedin"
href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanedow/"
target="_blank">
<i class="fa-brands fa-linkedin"></i>
</a>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</aside>
<main>
<article class="single">
<header>
<h1 id="beware-the-todo-list-7faac97dae4a">Beware the todo list</h1>
<p>
Posted on Mon 02 April 2018 in <a href="./category/productivity.html">Productivity</a>
</p>
</header>
<div>
<p><img alt="" src="images/1__enCLGwgR9ubVJ2oT2fFCKQ__2x.jpeg"></p>
<p>For the last few months, I've been working off a varying series of to-do lists to drive my life. I use a mix of the Things app, my bullet journal, and a calendar. Basically, my setup is to have annual Smart Goals, broken down into achievable chunks, then broken down into tasks to knock off todo lists. On the face of it, it's a way to organise a wiggly world.</p>
<p>And what is a wiggly world? Alan Watts describes it best:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This world is a great wiggly affair. Clouds are wiggly, waters are wiggly, plants are wiggly, mountains are wiggly, people are wiggly. But people are always trying to straighten things out.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Todo lists are essentially another attempt to make wiggly things straight and processable. There's the addictive high of knocking another task off a list, then spending no time actually appreciating what you've accomplished. After you spend months achieving something important, how long does the joy you obtain from completing the activity last? From my experience, maybe a few hours. Essentially the to-do lists can become is just a list of unfulfilled craving with no real end-point in sight.</p>
<p>Drive is important. From the theory behind Compassion Focused Therapy(CFT), your mind is broken down into three elements of emotional regulation. Drive, Threat and Soothing. All three are essential to living a happy, productive, flourishing life, but issues arise when the balance is skewed one way or another and this is where my concern with todo lists comes in.</p>
<p><img alt="" src="images/1__4LBDCrsJSxN2vzhDISELNw__2x.jpeg"></p>
<p>External threats like losing your job can be helpful so you don't slack off each day at work. There is a functional value to threats like this. However, I'm beginning to think that todo lists are engaging threat into a pit of sorts. In the act of creating a to-do list, your converting your Drive behavior into a sort of Threat based motivation. I feel Drive, so I make these todos, I am then threatening myself into an unfulfilled existence if I don't act on this external list. If balanced, this can work relatively well.</p>
<p>The problems arise when there's too much Drive forcing far too much Threat for you to handle. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors probably found it relatively easy to keep a balanced Drive -> Threat system, where we only kept in our heads a few goals to further enhance our status or gain a mate etc. Think of it like a physical attack, if you have one or two threats, you can make a reasonable estimation and attack/flee accordingly, when you're surrounded by a dozen or so, screw it, you might as well just lie on the ground and let it happen.</p>
<p>For now, I'm just going try to create a few aims(maybe three or so) each morning and work out, if I'm any more or less productive than I was before or after. No long todo lists, no more guilt over unfulfilled goals. I'm going to look at what my wiggly mind wants to do at each instant, rather than crowbarring in what my driven straight-lined-self wanted me to do a few weeks ago.</p>
</div>
<div class="tag-cloud">
<p>
</p>
</div>
</article>
<footer>
<p>© </p>
<p>
Built with <a href="http://getpelican.com" target="_blank">Pelican</a> using <a href="http://bit.ly/flex-pelican" target="_blank">Flex</a> theme
</p></footer> </main>
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context" : "http://schema.org",
"@type" : "Blog",
"name": " Shane Dowling ",
"url" : ".",
"image": "/images/logo.png",
"description": ""
}
</script>
</body>
</html>