Late Night PC

I actively avoided using any form of todo list for about the past year or so until just a couple weeks ago. The problem I kept running in to is that every time i started a to do list it would immediately grow overwhelmingly large. At that point things start falling off the end of the list - some things lose their relevence and others just don't matter anymore. Should "send a birthday card to an old friend" become "send a belated birthday card" or just get scratched out (not crossed off like those good tasks that got done but scribbled on until it's illegible so you can't be reminded how calous you could've been)? Jeff and I were chatting about this just now and I realized that this is a subject that I've really built some strong feelings about. My latest return to the todo is in the form of another ugly text file called "big todo.txt" wherein I've resigned to note things I have to do or want to get done but i can't hold myself accountable for the results or expect their won't be overlap, discontinuity or redundancy. I've thought a lot about this and my fundamental belief is this: the creation of a todo list implies that we expect ourselves to be able to complete all of these items. There is no guard to prevent me from putting any thing at all on the list. I could say:

• clean hall closet
• do laundry
• cure cancer
• wash car
• buy groveries

I think the key to success here is not to expect success. Take what you can get and don't beat yourself up when something sits on the todo for too long. Allow yourself a do-over. Don't set yourself up to beat yourself up. How else can I say this in a more clichéd way? The list is there to remind you: when it reminds you of something you can't do just ignore it like your mom nagging you to take out the trash. Those things you couldn't get done aren't going to get reversed and you're not going to make things better by doting on what you should've done. If the time is passed then it must have been filled. Enjoy the results of doing something that was more important or enjoy the memories of doing something that was more compelling but don't waste your time regretting what's passed. Think of your todo list like a credit card where the balance is measured in time. If you had the time to do the job, you'd do it now. If you write something on the list it's because you don't have the time to do it now. You've borrowed some time from your future self, just as a credit card allows you to borrow money from your future self. At some point you've got to pay that time back by doing whatever it was you had to put off. If you don't look at the cost before you start piling stuff on to that list then you're bound to have a list that you can't complete. The cost in time isn't as clear as a price tag in a store, but the only one that can estimate it is you. The better you get at estimating and the more attention you give to what you allow to go on your list, the better you can do at bringing that time credit back down to zero. If your estimates are off then you're always going to carry some time debt forward. At some point you have to clear that off either by doing what's on the list (which may not even be doable) or clearing your list and dealing with the consequences of whatever you didn't get done (namely: a messy closet, wearing your boxers inside-out, some cancer, a dirty car and a bright fridge). The consequences are the same consequences you had when you put that job on your todo list but now you've got to accept them as a fact of life since they're not something you're "going to get to soon." Thinking in terms of time economy, my "big todo.txt" is bound to fail. What a list like that produces is a huge catalog of things I could do, not a list of things that I really intend to do. Maybe I'll take my own advice here and only keep track of tasks I really think I can get done. At the same time it's important to remember that there are many times before that I've thought I could get those things on the list done and failure is not the end of me. Failure is just feedback for the next try.