Zombie to-do list: "[ ] Rot"
Jan. 2nd, 2008 10:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsA friend of mine (who shall remain nameless because the post was friends-locked) echoed a very common sentiment in a New Year's Resolution: "I resolve to end this year with a shorter to-do list than when I entered it." It's a noble sentiment-- "I shall get things done!"-- but it's also a misguided sentiment that, I believe, leads to ennui and spiritual malaise.
I mean, imagine what this resolution meant, if you kept it year after year: eventually you'd reach an empty to-do list. I can't imagine that: I can't imagine having nothing to do. In fact, I'll go one step further:
Only the dead have nothing to do.
I would love to get everything done on my current to-do list. But that doesn't mean that there won't be more to do. Gods know I'll find more things in which to be a dilettante.
And if your to-do list is getting shorter, review your incompletion trigger list and make sure you haven't missed anything.
I resolve that every item on my current to-do list will be Specific, Measurable, Acheivable, Realistic, and Time-constrained (SMART). And then I resolve to schedule each one, making sure that I know how much time it will take to finish each, and then schedule accordingly. By the end of the year, as many of those as I can fit in a year will be done.
I also resolve to find a random number of things I would enjoy doing such that, by the end of the year, my to-do list will be longer. And more fun.
I mean, imagine what this resolution meant, if you kept it year after year: eventually you'd reach an empty to-do list. I can't imagine that: I can't imagine having nothing to do. In fact, I'll go one step further:
Only the dead have nothing to do.
I would love to get everything done on my current to-do list. But that doesn't mean that there won't be more to do. Gods know I'll find more things in which to be a dilettante.
And if your to-do list is getting shorter, review your incompletion trigger list and make sure you haven't missed anything.
I resolve that every item on my current to-do list will be Specific, Measurable, Acheivable, Realistic, and Time-constrained (SMART). And then I resolve to schedule each one, making sure that I know how much time it will take to finish each, and then schedule accordingly. By the end of the year, as many of those as I can fit in a year will be done.
I also resolve to find a random number of things I would enjoy doing such that, by the end of the year, my to-do list will be longer. And more fun.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 01:02 pm (UTC)But even with the one-offs, once I get them done, there will be a whole new set of one-offs to populate the list. But at least they'll be different :P
Stacked todos are such an issue around here that I've seriously considered writing an entirely new todo list manager because I've never met one that handled stacked todos (or "gating issues" as we call them around here ;) ) in a way I liked and it's not for lack of auditions. But I can't write such software minimally until I've got my big computer up. This one has 32 MB of RAM and a 3 gig hard drive. Developing on it seems painful. Heck, web browsing on it can be painful. I've got a perfectly good desktop, I think, i just need to put it together, put an OS on it, that sort of thing. Speaking of gating issues...
I do know the stuck and sick of it feeling. It only took a year and a half to get a property emptied, cleaned and on the market that we could have never lived in anyway. Well, not for another twenty five years. I soooooo want to be in my nice house, on a nice plot of land, preferably with a bunc h of mooing mini-cattle and clucking chickens as of, oh, yesterday would be good :) Gods grant me patience! Right now! (and while I'm wishing, how about that book go write itself and the silicone molds make themselves, too)
I'm stealing your line about not overachieving, just setting very large goals. :)