Mental Onanism

I was just listening to an episode of Enough today, and one of the topics explored was productivity apps, otherwise ingloriously known as to do lists. The virtues of electronic organizing versus paper and pen versus combinations of both are always good things to debate, because we all approach our days and nights differently. Enough made several points that I have been thinking about myself lately.

Most productivity helpers/aids/programs/systems/apps do one thing and one thing well. They take all the stuff that is bouncing around in your head or lying in piles on your desk or gathering dust on the bookcase behind you, and they put these things, insofar as they are actionable items, into lists. Then, to varying degrees, depending on the salary of the guru who touts them or the infused technology of the program being downloaded, they rank order, star, massage, move, categorize, flag, tag, and bag each item for maximal exposure to your eyeballs and brain when you are doing something, when you are thinking about something, or when you leave or arrive from a certain place. There are now dozens if not hundreds of these apps for various platforms. They are shiny. They are slick. They are colorful. They are animated. They make organizing fun!

Before you know it, you have ten, then fifty, then a hundred or more items, projects and to dos, all lined up like little bottles at the fair, waiting for you to throw a softball at them and knock then down. What fun that is! What a thrill to knock something off your list. So much fun, in fact, that you just can’t wait to put three more things on the list to replace it. The problem? Your arm gets tired of pitching. You throw more slowly. You miss more bottles. (You do know that they’re weighted at the bottom and that makes them harder to knock over, right?) Your list grows. Your projects balloon. Your system of creativity gets more multi-layered and colorful and tentacled. You obsess. You plan. You scheme. You order. You move and nest and tweak hierarchies and change codes and flags.

But…

You do not act.

You know what I’m going to do, starting today? I’m going to try a self imposed rule or mantra, if you will, for one month. I’m going to try this simple strategy.

One Day. One Down.

I’m going to pick THE most crucial, timely thing out of my productivity management system, just the most important, has to be done or lightning will strike me dead task, and make sure I finish it by midnight. Just one task. Oh yes, of course I have dozens or hundreds more, just like you do. My list of proposed blog posts alone occupies its own Moleskine. BUT, not all of those posts must be written today, and they won’t be. Not all of my tasks must be done today, and they won’t be. I’m fooling myself if I think that carrying a list of fifty projects and tasks along with me every day makes me more productive or even LOOK more productive. It does not.

One Day. One Down.

Because your mother was right.

Staring at the same rotating to do list day after day will make you go blind.