Still nothing. This entire week at work I was either socializing orā¦ idk? Being sick? I want to write. But I have some kind of sleepiness / disorganization / brain fog going on.
Consuming a lot of caffeine all the time.
I can work if I know what is the next thing to do, but stopping and thinking ā this feels hard.
Maybe itās a combination of first being sick and now not getting enough sleep? Like idk worse sleep => worse memory => harder to reflect because I canāt remember what was happening two days ago.
doing tasks in order
Doing home tasks in order too now. Or at least several times I did.
Just noticed a thing that stops me from doing some tasks (at least when coding): if there are two equivalent ways to do the same thing, I feel anxious about accidentally choosing one that is not ārightā or ārecommendedā
Example: Iām migrating a node.js project to Turbobuild and I can either use pnpm or turbo as the task runner. So now Iām waiting for an answer from the Turbobuild maintainer about which he prefers.
I have two notebooks. Wondering if I should use the second one for tasks that a) I can do any time (not necessary to do today) and b) that are not scary. I know i canāt force myself to do things that are scary. But I can at least do the things that are not scary but that I still donāt do.
Sadly today instead of doing tasks in order I spent nearly all working time (and more!) at one task, which was āletās run some experimentsā and then later āletās try to fix the experiments after realizing they are wrong but I already did a write-upā.
Ie. not a well-defined task, but rather āinvestigate Xā.
Itās easy to get sucked into those, and I did.
I think partly this is also fueled by anxiety. What would happen if I donāt do the experiments? THE SYSTEM WOULD REMAIN BROKEN. HAVE TO FIX THE SYSTEM.
This is yet another example of sneaky anxiety that isnāt normal āIām scared someone might be angry at meā and so itās much harder to stop and try to be comfortable with it.
I suppose it could happen if I added it to the list of things to do during the day? But then I also suppose it would have to happen in the middle of the day, not by the end of it when Iām tired.
doing tasks in order
Itās working! Iāve been doing tasks in order both at home and at work, and I like it.
Iām doing tasks in order! At work Iām doing tasks in order and thatās nice. At home Iām doing tasks less in order but still nice. This is great. Man this is good. (Itās like 6.5/10 good, maybe 7/10 good.)
other
Iām not reviewing the stack of work tasks in Things. So even after Iām done with work, random āTodayā tasks in Things still remain there. I donāt like it.
Same with long-running work tasks. Iām not reviewing them re/ making progress on them, and not transferring any tasks from Things lists into the ātodayā work list. I donāt like it either. I want to either make progress on tasks or give up on them.
Important work tasks and important home tasks also stay out of today lists mostly.
Works even better when Iām in the office and the weather is good (like today) and there are people around (like today).
I also started a new notebook, āSocial tasksā. For reaching out / keeping in touch with people. Things like āsend photos to [friend]ā, etc. And doing things in order applies to it as well.
other
Mini-vacation (four days) starts tomorrow.
Iām still drinking several coffees daily. And my mood is bad without the coffee. And I still think it would be good to switch from Strattera to Ritalin, maybe.
I had a day off today and I did lots of tasks, both Brick.do and home/life tasks, in order. Happy about it.
The planning phase (āfind tasks in the morning to write downā) is a bit tricky for home, b/c I donāt have an established notion of ālonger-term projectsā right now. For Brick itās easier because the backlog of tasks existed in advance.
@graysonās idea of ābacklog with no pressureā lives on as a āSomedayā list in Things and I am using this list more often now. However, a lot of things there are either hard to do (āfind a therapistā), or I donāt really want to do them (ā¦do something that is useful for others but not myself).
One thing Iāve just noticed is that I still feel reluctant to move tasks into Someday because I know they will die there. So things like ācontribute to a friendās crowdfunding campaignā remain in the email inbox.
Which is what regular review of Someday supposed to fix! Probably.
For work tasks, anything that has āstepsā becomes a new project in Things and then itās fine if it lives there forever. But for life tasks, Iām not doing this except for the ālong running tasksā notebook that Iāve been neglecting.
I havenāt been using the āwork tasksā notebook recently so I canāt even put the reflection task there. Not sure why.
doing tasks in order
Still doing tasks in order and it still works.
social tasks notebook
It definitely made me do some things I wouldnāt have done otherwise.
At the same time, Iām not putting enough tasks there. Iād like to have a larger backlog. (I just went through the Someday tasks and found only one thing. Maybe thatās the use of Someday! To generate backlogs for things later!)
other
One thing about work that I just realized: I think I canāt stop to think when Iām under stress (have a task that Iām procrastinating on). If I feel free, I can stop to think and I can prioritize / reflect / whatever.
The situation in the past three days has been pretty bad:
Iāve started taking ritalin 30mg (up from 20mg).
It caused some kind of hypefocus where I was working on a single work project until 11pm and was neglecting all other work tasks or home chores. (Or eating.)
This doesnāt feel so good.
Including having a headache. But also just in general.
I already made a note to not work on that project tomorrow. Weāll see what happens.
In other news, the āSomedayā hack maybe makes things a bit easier, but now I have the same problem for work tasks. For example, my entire wishlist for the work project I mentioned above.
I suppose I can make a āwork somedayā project in Things and just dump all the wishlist items there. ā done
I am struggling with any tasks that are like āmaintaining invariantsā.
For example, I maintain a Discord server. And I have an invariant that āREAL NAMES OF ALL PEOPLE JOINING DISCORD MUST BE POSTED IN A SECRET CHANNELā. So for the past two days I had a todo about that. It doesnāt have a deadline, itās not even that important at all. But I want to keep maintaining invariants
Same for things like āfix my chess game that used to work and now it stoppedā (the invariant being āthe game must work at all timesā), or ārecord meetups in Logseqā, or anything else that Iāve decided to record, whatever.
^ tasks like āreply to peopleā are also in the same category.
I donāt feel like I should just decide not to reply to family/friends/colleagues? And I donāt feel like I should do it āeventually / possibly neverā, either. But at the same time itās never urgent and never important. So idk what to do.
(when itās urgent/important I do reply promptly)
Update: I just sat down and did a bunch of chores rn and it wasnāt hard.
I guess the problem would solve itself if I hadā¦ more free time? Or more free time with energy? Like, everything gets done just fine if I have a long weekend or if I donāt feel tired.
A long, long time ago (like, 25 years ago) I realized that I needed to keep my life less full than other people apparently need to keep their lives. It was the start of a long, long process (still ongoing) to honor me-the-way-I-am, instead of oh-look-over-there-at-all-these-other-people-this-is-how-Adult-Humans-do-it-so-get-cracking-self.
Along the way this led me to realize that I donāt have to do social things just because other people want me to do them. As in, I donāt have to call X back just because X called me. I donāt have to respond to Yās email this week, or ever. I donāt have to reply to Zās text message (and I turned off the ability for people to see when Iāve read their messages). I donāt think itās inaccurate to liken this to (for someone else) a person barging into your house expecting you to make them coffee and cake just because theyāre in the mood for it.
One of the biggest gifts we can give ourselves is to realize and honor the way we actually tick, emotionally-physically-existentially, and to release ourselves from having to do it the way other people seem to. Let the world know you on your terms, not theirs. The people around me have grown to realize that, though I am not frequently social, I am always kind, and a great listener when they need one.
For me itās a often question of level. The individual response isnāt urgent or important, but maintaining the relationship might be.
Iāve got a handful of relationship-related goals. Let me count the ways:
mum ā for calling my mother more regularly, but probably still less often than you might expect
dear ā for keeping contact with my dearest friends, the ones who energise me when I remember to interact
outreach ā for turning the handle on work relationships old and new
helpful/arf ā for keeping the home fires burning
Most of these are in the style of a UVI goal, where any activity that is in keeping with the spirit of the intention counts for a point, but a flurry of activity probably only counts for one point that day.
one thousand sparklepoints!
These days I find myself acknowledging messages (e.g. ) more often than sending contentful replies. And thatās fine.
realize and honor the way we actually tick, emotionally-physically-existentially
I think the way I tick isā¦ I get mired in chore-style tasks very easily? Like, every time I touch my phone/laptop, I get stuck for 30 minutes. I suppose not everyone is like this.
I did start to react to pplās messages with more often instead of actually watching the video / whatever. And I did start warning people recently that āhey realistically Iām not going to watch [this]ā.
Iād love to also be able to do this at work, I suppose. āI wonāt participate in [this discussion]ā. This requires some trust that everything will be fine without my input, I guess.
āsocial tasksā notebook
I already made a note to not work on that project tomorrow. Weāll see what happens.
one thousand sparklepoints! 
) more often than sending contentful replies. And thatās fine.