I don't know if it's an ADHD thing for me or some undiagnosed Autism thing but, for part of my life I used to make lists to try and prevent procrastination spirals. And the lists would get too big and I would fail them as the backlog grew. It makes me very wary of planning to this day. Has anyone else dealt with this in such a context?
Yes, and in precisely that context.
Listing is essential because my ADHD-ass autistic brain leaks like a sieve, but doing a list is also a task and why would I give myself an extra task to update a list when I could just do the task?
Proceed directly to the task disappearing from my short-term memory and only getting started when someone asks why I haven't finished it yet (if at all).
I kind of have that problem in that if I'm doing multiple tasks at my work where I'm moving all over the place, I'll probably forget one of them. Usually I'm pretty good at remembering stuff. Though in all honesty my mind just doesn't feel as "sharp" as it used to a decade ago.
Hey! I’m also dealing with that right now!
I'll tell you a bit about my journey:
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) have been fundamental for me. The single best resource for ACT is A Liberated Mind. Scrum has been my sharpest tool to get stuff done when the pressure comes up. Getting Things Done and Bullet Journaling are both good productivity/organization systems. Procrastination.com has good stuff too (although its theory of motivation is a cartoon of reality). Essentialism and The One Thing suck, with the exception of The One Thing's focusing question and the idea that not everything is equal (Pareto principle and structural analysis). Tiny Habits and APA's Procrastination are beautiful little books! The ACT Map, the Matrix (especially if using the "survival-vitality" horizontal axis), and The Choice Point are all incredibly powerful to become aware of a reality you live in and change it. Value Stream Mapping is something I want to test, so that I can see what are the sources of value in my life and prioritize those. At the same time, I'm worried that Value Stream Mapping is overkill… any suggestions?
At first, I thought I didn't have the right tools and systems, so I learned Procrastination.com, Getting Things Done (GTD), and Bullet Journaling. All three have good interfaces. I define "interface" here as the things you touch and do to say that you're 'doing GTD' or 'doing Bullet Journaling'. Ultimately, I stuck to Getting Things Done because it was much more comprehensive than Procrastination.con and because I cannot rely on a physical journal (I could easily lose my stuff at my job). However, my roommate's brother, who recently went on a similar journey of self-management of sorts, decided to get organized after he decided to get medicated for ADHD and settled on Bullet Journaling. He swears by it.
Now, my problem with GTD was exactly what you're describing: my Someday/Maybe list got insanely large. This problem seems to be addressed in Bullet Journaling by the process of "migration", so Bullet Journaling could be a quick and easy solution for you and I. However, not only do I want to make GTD work for me, but I also believe there could be a third path, one that teaches me how to prioritize well regardless of whether I use GTD or Bullet Journaling.
I looked online to see if other people had my "massive Someday/Maybe list in GTD" problem and someone mentioned that, every year, they re-read GTD and Essentialism. I was like "alright, let's give it a shot".
Essentialism was a surprisingly lukewarm experience. On the one hand, I agree with lots of what the book says, but it has an awful theory of human motivation behind it and an awful interface. To understand how awful Essentialism's theory of motivation is, you can read about Behavior Analysis in the context of contextual behaviorism or functional contextualism. Heck, even learning Acceptance and Commitment Therapy shows that! You can also go about this by reading Tiny Habits and understanding the Fogg Behavior Model; there are many ways of seeing how ignorant and awful Essentialism's theory of motivation is.
Just to give you an example, Essentialism tells the story of a company that didn't hire an otherwise amazing candidate because, at the end of their 'building interview' they didn't orderly put away the building tools in the toolbox… Imagine being an amazing builder and you're told "you're not a good fit" just because someone ignorantly and presumptuously interpreted something contextual and specific as fundamental about your values or worldview! Appalling! Ignorant! So incredibly frustrating! Does this company not understand continuous improvement? Does this company not understand how behavior works and how to change it? If we adopt the same fixed mindset as them, we can come up with ignorant questions too: can you really trust a company with building complex structures if they cannot improve how one worker stores their tools— can you trust them with improving anything at all? Will they adapt and improve when something tough comes up? Or will they be all like "Oh, no. Sorry. We only ever work in perfect conditions"? And, apparently, this company's ignorance and presumption is a wonderful example of essentialism (at least that's what the Essentialism author says)… Gross… Ugh… I hated that…
Another example is how he talks about Learned Helplessness. Sure, someone who disengages from the job could have learned helplessness, but someone who is a manic overachiever? The author should actually read Learned Optimism and see how Seligman equates Learned Helplessness with depression. For Seligman, Learned Helplessness is depression, and it is accompanied with a lack of desire to even try. Once again, behavioral contextualism, the Theory of Constructed Emotion, or the Fogg Behavior Model make it all clear.
Anyway, I know this is a rant, but I really want to be clear about the problems in Essentialism.
After that lukewarm experience, I went on and read The One Thing, which seemed like a book with a better interface. Unfortunately, this book also had a terrible theory of human motivation regarding willpower and other topics (again, understanding contextual behaviorism, the Fogg Behavior Model, or the Theory of Constructed Emotion makes it clear). At least the book was good at One Thing ™️©️®️, and that is the focusing question: "What is the one thing I can do such that, by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” By understanding that not everything is equal (you can get at this idea through the Pareto Principle or structural analysis), you can learn to prioritize the things that most matter!
So, I now had the focusing question under my belt. I then made small detour in Tiny Habits land. What a wonderful little book. Please read it. It might seem as if it doesn't directly address your question, but it has taught me that I can be strategic about how to achieve any goal, including how to prioritize my list. It has made me more relaxed, because I know what matters and what doesn't really matter. What matters are my high-impact behaviors; those I want to make habitual. The rest doesn't matter as much, at least for now.
As of now, I am playing with the idea of using something like Value Stream Mapping/Management for different areas of my life: work, studies, relationships, family, physical health, leisure, etc. My aim is to see how the things that I do in my life contribute to my values or not. The Value Stream begins and ends with me. I have lots of values in my life, and I want to see how my projects/products/stuff-I-do contribute (or not!) to my values. My hope is that I will be able to prioritize the things that are most valuable in my life!
Just so you know, there's also the ACT Map, as described in A Liberated Mind. It's comprehensive, but I have struggled to prioritize stuff within the ACT Map itself, because I write so much in it! There's also the ACT Matrix (especially if it's modified into the "survival-vitality" horizontal axis), which I love to use for context-specific problems or situations that I want to evaluate. There's also The Choice Point, which also helps for context-specific problems or situations, but emphasizes behavior more than internal experiences. I should make a shoutout to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Combined with prioritization and a bit of reframing, it has been the single largest source of well-being for me in a long time.
Also, there's this beautiful little book Procrastination, published by the APA. I have just started reading it and it has been amazing so far! Even if you don't consider a book about procrastination something that you need, it could help with fundamentally changing your stance towards to-dos! As John Hattie in Visible Learning (The Sequel) shows, our fundamental beliefs are perhaps more important than the specific strategies that we use.
There's something I need to mention here! If you read Gabriele Oettingen's book on positive thinking, you'll learn how to do WOOP! WOOP is incredibly powerful to align your motivation vectors. It's a dangerous tool, because you could unconsciously conclude that you can't do stuff that you can actually do and therefore disengage (it's important to understand things like the Theory of Constructed Emotion to see how this is possible, as well as Tiny Habits, Visible Learning, and Scrum to see how to iteratively and progressively do things that are hard). Conversely, your motivation vectors could align towards doing the thing, and you'll be unstoppable.
In my view, WOOP exploits memory reconsolidation, which I learned from in Coherence Therapy. If I'm right, this explains why WOOP is sometimes not as effective: you need to assure that you exploit the memory reconsolidation mechanism.
Oh, and before I end! When I need to just get my shit together quickly, I basically do Scrum: I make a quick post-it backlog, prioritize it, and start whacking. If I the list is too large, I do Fibonacci point estimation. I dislike how ad hoc this "when in doubt, Scrum" approach is, because it is not strategic at all. The backlog is built in the moment, with no long term plan. It's just to complete the tasks right in front of me. But it works. Time and time again. I have had so many coworkers and friends telling me they were pleasantly surprised by my approach to work, which, again, is basically Scrum.
While it may seem that I have read lots and have my shit together, it's a constant struggle! If someone has something that could help me prioritize in such a way that I connect what I value with what I do, please let me know! Maybe Value Stream Mapping is too overkill for this, but it seems comprehensive enough…
Google tasks actually worked well for me because I could categorize them and schedule notifications. Although most to do list apps can do that not just google
Way different from when I used to write these things on planners and scraps of paper.
Yes, 100%. As someone who actually loves making random lists, to-do lists are the worst because they're easily compounded and have the added bonus of regret and guilt when they aren't completed, which can lead to more stress. For me it's always been about breaking things down into smaller bits so that I can process and act quickly. Prioritizing by time, importance, and complexity helps kinda break down the overwhelm enough to pick a task and see it through. It's probably always going to be a bit of a struggle, but knowing your own strengths and weaknesses can help form a system that works best for you. Maybe just avoiding the to-do list all together is the best course of action. Might try treating it like a video game objective or something easier for your particular neurodivergence to grab hold of.
I mostly use notecards for any to-dos I have, which keeps the list to a pretty small number of bullet points that can be managed, and I rarely ever use a to-do list that spans more than a 24hr period. For work I use sticky notes and a desk calendar to help with scheduling. If something on the sticky note or note card doesn't get done the day of, it goes to the top of tomorrow's list. It seems to work for me when I'm feeling overwhelmed at where to start.
Might try treating it like a video game objective or something easier for your particular neurodivergence to grab hold of.
I tried this in my own particular way and I ended up losing a couple of times as a result. I couldn't even win my own game. And unfortunately, losing in life has far more costly consequences than a video game.
Ha, I meant more like breaking tasks to do into video game-esque objectives, but I can empathize with the 'losing at life' sentiment. Being neurodivergent sure is fun, isn't it?
