Today has not been productive

[sparkindarkness]

Are you ever so intimidated by your to-do list that you actually do nothing at all? Make no logical sense does it?

I don't work with to do lists, not written ones. A mental one I can deal with, I can review what I've done and be all achievement minded and stuff. Sure I forget things but only rarely, any lists I do make tend to be vague and scrappy - brief notes and post its scattered around saying strange things like "trousers" (do washing) or "cheese" (go shopping).

But today i was organised and wrote the vast list of crap down... and did none of it.

I mean, you just look at this HUUUGE list and the sheer horror of it makes the mind recoil and run to the most unproductive thing it can find. i spent an hour reading a freaking webcomic archive. Of a comic I've already read! Damn it brain, we're the capable one remember? The capable one does not cower in a corner and waste an entire damn day.



Also, my temperature sense is fried. I close all the windows and wrap up and it's boiling. I open windows and lose some clothes and its freezing. This? Does not amuse.

Comments

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

::HUGS::

And this is why breaking things down into smaller tasks does not work for me. It expands worse than trying to pack things. Things like "do the dishes" start with "search son's room for forks" and given that he's a teenaged boy...

Wrap up and open the windows, dear one. And have some tea. If you don't drink it, you can threaten to throw it at anyone who persists in bothering you.

[phurie-dae.livejournal.com]

Pfft - a physical to-do list is just another thing to throw away when it's done. I honestly can't say I get massive satisfaction out of drawing lines through a page. The only time I write things down is when I'm going shoppingm, to save myself the inevitable headdesk when I forget something crucial.

[ladydyani.livejournal.com]

Hey! No angsting, just think of how good it felt to be lazing around, reading comic archives! Sometimes being lazy is good for you. Incidentally, which comic was it?

Did you try closing the windows and losing the layers? Or opening the windows and layering up?

[logophilos.livejournal.com]

Are you ever so intimidated by your to-do list that you actually do nothing at all

Frequently. It's called being stressed out. So you're doing the only sane thing which is trying to reduce your stress. You need a day off. Suggest to Beloved he breaks out the ropes and flogger :)

[klgaffney.livejournal.com]

yes. that, plus the amount of effort to make an organized list in the first place, tends to put me off to-do lists in general. i do have lists of things that i should remember in order to perform a particular task, but those are more like grocery lists, as opposed to to-do lists. i tend to list mentally, and file things under "i have to get this done today/now." and "whenever the hell i get to it" in degrees of urgency.

=( i hate that. open windows and wrap up, or close windows and lose clothes?

[meridae.livejournal.com]

The trick to having a successful to do list is to make it a *realistic* and limited to do list. If I write down every single little tiny thing I need to do, then yeah, I'm so intimidated and anxious I don't do any of it. But if I think "Right, I need to achieve three things today" or "The only really urgent things to do are X,Y,Z" and then only write those three or so things down, then that's much more successful and I often get even more done than is on the list. A to do list, for most people, isn't really an aide memoire, but more something tangible that you can tick off and go Hey, look what I did!

[wyrdrune.livejournal.com]

I fully understand what you're saying. Personally I have to make lists, because my boss want's to be able to see what I'm doing. So my trick is to write out the list, freak out about how much there is to do, have a cuppa, then identify two or three simple things (regardless of priority) and do them. Then cross them out.

I find that a list with things crossed out somehow looks less intimidating.

Just my 2d worth.

[solid-squid.livejournal.com]

I do this way more often than I should. The only times I use to do lists are if I have a large, intimidating task and want to break it down into smaller, less intimidating chunks, and even then I don't expact to get the whole list done in a day, but rather that this is the order I do the things in until it's finished.

Actually, I guess I do ocassionaly have a to do list for what to do that day, but I never think of it that way, just as a reminder of what needs done, and it's never more than three things, cause any more and it won't be done.

[allthepettylies.livejournal.com]

Psh, I know the feeling hun. I was suppose to clean up my section of the house, and have some friends over, whom I haven't seen in, seriously, years. I didn't.

Even now, I'm suppose to be doing homework (ie printing out and and studying the stuff you gave me :D) but I'm perusing livejournal, looking for distractions.

I think its something in the air, and its transcontinental.

[home-of-usher.livejournal.com]

break the list up into 7 bits. do one list bit a day for a week. ta-da you're done. Make more list bits as needed. or another huge list and cut it up again. you can also amuse yourself bu destroying the list bit in some entertaining way. ie. setting it on fire in an ashtray, stuffing it down the garbage disposal if you have one, dropping it in the loo and pissing on it before you flush it, or maybe folding them up into a gradually growing army of little origami penguins which you will them invade Beloved's desk space with etc. it makes getting the list completed more amusing if there's something cathartic to do with it afterward.

for the temperature thing, either close the windows or get bundled up. one or the other there buddy. :P

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

I cannot function without to-do lists, but I get that I am weird and strange in this regard.

(also - you have a lot on your plate - soemtimes you just need to *stop* for a while.)

[jerril]

I had a bad patch with depression, that led to me feeling overwhelmed and panic'd basically all the time. Ironically enough, the trick for me was... to write out a to-do list.

Yes, the first stage, when you're still irrational and freaking out, is "OMG SOOOO MUUUCH I'M GONNA DIE".

The next step is to sit down and eyeball how long each task will actually take you. If you have 20 things on your list, but they're going to take you 5-10 minutes each, that's about a morning's worth of work and then tada, you're done.

Obviously if your TODO list includes things like "Find brother's evil ex and set her on fire", the "estimated time to completion" isn't going to be 20 minutes. It's a big undefined.

So you don't PUT tasks like "find brother's evil ex and set her on fire" on the list. That's not a task. That's a goal.

Put down, instead, the tasks you currently have to do that advance your progress towards the goal, like
* Call Sgt. So and So again and remind him we still want to see her charred remains please. - 15 minutes.
* Call Creditor Q and see if if Evil Ex has tried to put through any more charges, and from where. - 20 minutes.
* Next Tuesday, Call Sgt. So and So again - can't be done right now.

It's sort of like slogging your way through a ridiculous reputation grind, or saving up 10,000 gold before the expansion comes out.

When you start, it looks like an impossible mountain, and it's really easy to run away. So instead of looking at the peak of the mountain, say "Well, if I can make 100 gold today, that's a start." and work on conquering that first foothill.

If you'll excuse the deranged nested metaphors, and I know sorting some of this crap out isn't nearly as entertaining as reading webcomics or playing WoW but sitting around freaking OUT about this stuff and then feeling guilty about not getting anything done is even less fun.

[jerril]

If it helps, put down some stuff that had to be done, that you've done already, and how long it took you to do them. Having a list of "completed" items may help you feel a little better.

Once you start being able to cross off the new things, you can look at those things and compare the work to the yet-uncompleted work, and feel a little more like you can actually handle some more of those items, eventually. It's actual, graphic proof that Things Can Get Done. The more you nibble away at the list, the more it's a nice symbol of Less Things To Worry About.