Fitting in all the tiny things
Last week I wrote about saying no. It’s a lesson I’m constantly re-learning. The problem is there’s so many things that I want to do.
Even when I’ve managed to cut my tasks down to a tiny list, I inevitably look for ways to add in new things.
I seek out the novel, while not properly considering how it weighs against the existing.
The last few days have been a perfect enscapsulation of many interesting things all needing attention at once.
When this happens I constantly look for ways to consider the value of each against the energy I have left in a day.
Take one tiny task for example: trying out a new app.
It’s a productivity app, and could solve a problem I have with how I use my Mac. Namely, that I operate with the dock and menu bar hidden by default. I like it that way, but the most common reason I scroll up to show the menu bar is to check the time, or change my bluetooth device.
I’d had it on my list to check out Corner Time for a few days1. I wanted to give it a proper shake and take the time to really see if it’d help with my use case. That meant spending more than a few seconds with it.
So I put it on my Things 3 todo list early this week. It started on Tuesday’s todos. But by mid-morning I knew I wouldn’t get to it. So I bumped it to Wednesday. However, Tuesday evening I looked at all my items for the next morning, and realized Thursday would be better.
Finally, this afternoon, I spent a few minutes trying it out. I installed it, tweaked a few settings, then put it on my work and personal laptops. I like it. I’m still not 100% sure if it’s the right app for my use case, but the task is complete. It takes no energy to leave things as is, with the new tool appearing in the top right corner. Any changes at this point will be driven out of a desire to modify. But the decision to take the time to try it out is already complete.
This tiny task is just one of many.
Every little ideas I have gets thrown into Things or Apple Notes. Bt if we’re being honest most never go through the process I described above.
Instead, and more often than not, I’ll move the task to Someday, a fancy catch all in Things that includes a graveyard of ideas. Currently it sits at 622 items that I’ve added to my todo at some point in the last few years. All of these were items I ultimately decided to take out of the daily list.
And here’s the key for me in all this. If something is in the Today view, it will either get done, deleted, moved to a future day, or put into Someday.
Today is an accurate portrayal of the tasks I intend to do before I go to sleep, and hour by hour I’m evaluating what still makes sense, and what needs to shift. When I put something to tomorrow, or later this week, it means I still think I’ll do it. When it moves to Someday, I’ve given myself permission to never think about it again, but I can dig it up if needed.
This process, this constant culling of items, is a way for me to constantly check if a new idea will fit in, and what previous todos need to be taken out to make room.
Another small task I added was to check if a the RSS feed from a WordPress site can be transferred to Ghost. I put that task on my phone or watch at some point after work. However, when I sat down for the day to evaluate my tasks, it wasn’t relevant and didn’t hold the weight needed against all the other things I was wanting to do.
The problem I’m constantly fighting against is task overload. Add too many small things on a single day and you’re going to just ignore the todo list entirely, or bump everything out to the following day and build up that list of planned things to infinity.
I’d rather be pragmatic, telling myself no regularly, and leaving room for the things that really matter. The graveyard will continue to grow, and that’s fine with me.
1. The first step to keeping a todo list is having a place to write everything down. I’d rather have the idea captured, and if need be ignore it, instead of it floating away and leaving me with the vague sense of missing something.