Re: Our brains are polar oppositesda_ljNovember 23 2008, 15:48:01 UTC
Our brains are polar opposites
Ha, wow that's a neat observation. I'm curious about this...
I hear ya about really preferring to not have more than two days' work in your to-do. Do you notice that a longer list becomes overwhelming and anxiety-producing (so you have a need to get started doing before you get to the end of writing it down)?
And/or the process of writing it down is boring/repetitive/feels unnecessary? Or is it a different kind of rebellion? (I do have a bit of experience with mental rebellion, heh).
There's an "organic-ness" to keeping it all in the brain and letting the most crucial things percolate out.
I grok the idea of needing the tasks to come from intuition rather than (well, what's the opposite of intuitive; I guess Myers-Briggs would say "Sensitive").
GTD does have an aspect of self-discipline; changing one's behaviour to do a daily sweep through the to-do lists and done lists, seeing what percolates out of the brain for what else should be done next that hasn't been written down yet.
It's starting to feel like a conversation with myself, I think. At core, I guess there's a bit of narcissism with my task lists; I like reviewing what I did already, and I like the feeling of "I could do *282* things right now if I wanted to."
...I think the most related mental rebellion in my experience is the tasks I know are necessary but I just won't start them. Often involving reaching out to ask someone for something. Or boring lengthly tasks I know will take a long time.
On the boring, lengthly tasks, it seems very helpful to me to break them into the smallest "next action" possible. I'm still trying to figure out how to tweak some of these so they feel like fun, rather than a necessary chore.
Ha, wow that's a neat observation. I'm curious about this...
I hear ya about really preferring to not have more than two days' work in your to-do. Do you notice that a longer list becomes overwhelming and anxiety-producing (so you have a need to get started doing before you get to the end of writing it down)?
And/or the process of writing it down is boring/repetitive/feels unnecessary? Or is it a different kind of rebellion? (I do have a bit of experience with mental rebellion, heh).
There's an "organic-ness" to keeping it all in the brain and letting the most crucial things percolate out.
I grok the idea of needing the tasks to come from intuition rather than (well, what's the opposite of intuitive; I guess Myers-Briggs would say "Sensitive").
GTD does have an aspect of self-discipline; changing one's behaviour to do a daily sweep through the to-do lists and done lists, seeing what percolates out of the brain for what else should be done next that hasn't been written down yet.
It's starting to feel like a conversation with myself, I think. At core, I guess there's a bit of narcissism with my task lists; I like reviewing what I did already, and I like the feeling of "I could do *282* things right now if I wanted to."
...I think the most related mental rebellion in my experience is the tasks I know are necessary but I just won't start them. Often involving reaching out to ask someone for something. Or boring lengthly tasks I know will take a long time.
On the boring, lengthly tasks, it seems very helpful to me to break them into the smallest "next action" possible. I'm still trying to figure out how to tweak some of these so they feel like fun, rather than a necessary chore.
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