I have just committed the most egregious level of over-optimization.
I started using a to-do list for everything in my life. And then made it 100% measurable to stare back at me from a dashboard.
Every single time I think of something I need to do, I add it to my to-do list as a task and classify it into a ~5 min, ~30 min, or 2+ hour task. Each task is then assigned 1,3, or 10 points respectively. And at the end of the week I can see how much work I got done!
The graphs are a bit overkill. And it’s also quite easy to work on one too many “to-do list improvement” tasks rather than the actual list. But I’m a data scientist and sucker for pretty charts and semi-useful insights. For example - it’s surprising how much time personal errands and planning travel take.
The unfortunate downside to the new to-do list is that work looks never-ending. Work is never-ending whether I have a to-do list or not. But it’s easy to feel shackled to the eternity of work when it’s on a list rather than working on whatever spontaneous tasks crop up in your day.
Here’s why it’s absolutely necessary for me though.
One is that anyone who wants to accomplish their long term goals has to grind through piles of dogshit. Dogshit work like “find a manufacturer by jumping on 10+ calls and getting price quotes”. Yes some of it is deferrable - but a lot of it is not, and it has to get done.
And it’s not relegated to just goals. “Adulting” is a phrase invented by people who didn’t realize they really have to do boring tasks they didn’t want to do. And it takes writing it down to objectively realize that yes, renewing your driver’s license is super important and it completely sucks….but it has to get done.
The second thing is that the to-do list helps me be accountable for getting some focus time in. Running my own business destroyed my ability to hold an attention span. I’ve heard having kids can also make this difficult for some reason. Doing focus work is critical to your sanity and development but so difficult to make time for unless you force it in. See more on this topic by Jason Cohen here.
To wrap up - I’m wondering if I’m preaching to the choir. Does everyone have a to-do list for their life or am I onto something?