1/ People usually don’t do enough maintenance on their task list, which makes it overburdened. Old unfinished work, raw ideas that aren’t tasks but more like puzzles to solve. (What did I mean by that?) Tasks that you don’t really want to do or honestly lack the energy to do now.
2/ Setting up a new system feels more productive than doing that maintenance work. The former results in a clean, shiny new system, while the latter doesn’t present such clearly visible result.
3/ Doing maintenance involves making hard choices. You have to face your own limitations when thinking about whether each stale task should be put off or discarded. Doing this all at once by bankrupting your system feels easier.
5/ Poorly formulated tasks feel overwhelming. Just looking at them invites a panic attack and we usually succumb to procrastination to rescue ourselves. Correctly named tasks feel like ‘Why would I even write it down? It’s so quick and easy!’
5.1/ No, it’s not quick and easy, but you don’t know that and you never ever learn to correct this underestimation bias.
6/ Again. A good tasks list looks like you’ve put more work to compile it than to do the work itself. Too much work, they say. And then they proceed to their usual road-to-burnout routine, which apparently is not that much work, is it?
Next learn the basics:
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