21 - Hundreds of Ways to Get S#!+ Done—and We Still Don't
Credit to
Jack of some quantity of trades#3247, a Dendrologist from the Dendron community, for contributing the link and summary for this week's Dendron Reading Series!
Even with all the best tools, are you still struggling to get things done?
Data suggests that people mainly uses to-do lists and associated productivity software to manage their mood rather than to organize their activities. Typically, the contents of to-do lists is poorly correlated with things accomplished, which seem to usually be what people remember on the spur of the moment or felt like doing anyway.
Of all technology, productivity software is rather uniquely suited to evoke experiences of guilt and virtue (this has something to do with the Protestant work ethic). Adding items to to-do lists allows us to maintain the conceit that we will take care of them at some point, providing a semblance of cognitive and emotional relief. Though, since people usually don't actually do the things on their lists, they become "lists of shame" that continue accumulating until they are abandoned in "productivity bankruptcy."
Ultimately, the drive to adopt productivity tools and methods may reflect the fear of death ("We like lists because we do not want to die"); having a sense of our mortality and finite time, and wanting to accomplish our infinite ambitions and desires.
All of this may be rather bleak, but there are a couple prescriptions that emerge from this perspective:
- More effective use of lists of tasks may be made by assigning them to specific blocks of time in a schedule. This kind of planning forces us to come to terms with what it is actually possible for us to accomplish.
- We can avoid generating "lists of shame" by making sure that the rates at which we are adding to our to-do lists are comparable with the rates at which we are completing tasks. This may require reconciling oneself with one's mortality and accepting existential limits.
Related
- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, of Oliver Burkeman: This book discusses prescription #2 in some depth
- Life as Nonproductive Act, from David McLaver's Overthinking Everything substack: Contains some musings about the Protestant work ethic in contemporary circumstances.
- Complice: Beyong Getting Things Done
- The Complice paradigm is designed with some of these things in mind, eschewing exhaustive collection in favor of focusing on what is most important on a day-to-day basis. Productivity software that implements Complice is typically designed to prevent the accumulation of lists of shame by preventing the user from unreflectively carrying tasks over from day to day, among other design features.
Backlinks