by It's common for people, including myself, to think of their tasks in a todo-list fashion: "Items I1, I2, and I3 are important, so let me put them on my todo list and get them done."
But what happens when you have to much to do -- when your list grows to I1, ..., I50? The situation can feel stressful, because it seems like "I have to get all the things on my list done. How am I ever going to do it? Maybe I'll just have to push myself really hard and use my adrenaline?" That's how a perfectionist might approach the situation. If you don't get everything on your list done, things won't be "perfect." This may lead you to overwork yourself and burn out. Or it might lead you to feel that the situation is hopeless and lose motivation to start on anything.
I've been keeping a personal utilitarian todo list for at least ~5 years now, and it's literally a 30-page Google Docs document with somewhere in the range of 500 to 1000 items (some big, some small). In addition to this, I have extra todo lists scattered across other Google Docs targeted to specific projects. As time goes on, the list only grows rather than shrinking, and given this trend, I have no hope of finishing everything on it before the rapture.
But this is okay. In fact, this is how todo lists are supposed to be. It's an illusion to imagine that the tasks you need to do are exactly as big or as small as a set of items written down somewhere. That list may reflect a random assortment of ideas that happened to come into your head at various times. But if you sat down and thought about other things you could do, you could add to that list, and you might be able to do so indefinitely.
Instead, as utilitarianism itself shows us, life's tasks are a series of calls to the pull_highest_priority_element function on a priority queue, where the priority of each task is roughly its expected benefit divided by its cost, with intelligent consideration of temporal ordering. (For example, if X is really valuable, such that its benefit would far exceed the cost of doing it now, but if you could do X at much lower cost by waiting until next week without much less benefit, then you should probably wait until next week. This is similar to the reason for doing the items in the upper left quadrant of Stephen Covey's important-urgent matrix before those in the upper right: The opportunity cost of doing an important-but-not-urgent task is higher when you have other important-and-urgent tasks than when you're less busy with urgent things.)
So todo lists should really be priority queues. This means that when it feels like "you have too much to do," you don't have to feel stressed out about it. Sort the items by priority, do the most important ones, and don't worry too much when you don't get to everything. "Work smarter, not harder." Conversely, if you finish your todo list, you're not really done: Go off and think of more items to add to the queue.
But realize that tasks can include things like sleep, talking with friends, taking an hour off for a mindless activity, or whatever else keeps you sane.
P.S., if I don't reply to this thread immediately, it's because I've put other things higher on my priority queue.
But what happens when you have to much to do -- when your list grows to I1, ..., I50? The situation can feel stressful, because it seems like "I have to get all the things on my list done. How am I ever going to do it? Maybe I'll just have to push myself really hard and use my adrenaline?" That's how a perfectionist might approach the situation. If you don't get everything on your list done, things won't be "perfect." This may lead you to overwork yourself and burn out. Or it might lead you to feel that the situation is hopeless and lose motivation to start on anything.
I've been keeping a personal utilitarian todo list for at least ~5 years now, and it's literally a 30-page Google Docs document with somewhere in the range of 500 to 1000 items (some big, some small). In addition to this, I have extra todo lists scattered across other Google Docs targeted to specific projects. As time goes on, the list only grows rather than shrinking, and given this trend, I have no hope of finishing everything on it before the rapture.
But this is okay. In fact, this is how todo lists are supposed to be. It's an illusion to imagine that the tasks you need to do are exactly as big or as small as a set of items written down somewhere. That list may reflect a random assortment of ideas that happened to come into your head at various times. But if you sat down and thought about other things you could do, you could add to that list, and you might be able to do so indefinitely.
Instead, as utilitarianism itself shows us, life's tasks are a series of calls to the pull_highest_priority_element function on a priority queue, where the priority of each task is roughly its expected benefit divided by its cost, with intelligent consideration of temporal ordering. (For example, if X is really valuable, such that its benefit would far exceed the cost of doing it now, but if you could do X at much lower cost by waiting until next week without much less benefit, then you should probably wait until next week. This is similar to the reason for doing the items in the upper left quadrant of Stephen Covey's important-urgent matrix before those in the upper right: The opportunity cost of doing an important-but-not-urgent task is higher when you have other important-and-urgent tasks than when you're less busy with urgent things.)
So todo lists should really be priority queues. This means that when it feels like "you have too much to do," you don't have to feel stressed out about it. Sort the items by priority, do the most important ones, and don't worry too much when you don't get to everything. "Work smarter, not harder." Conversely, if you finish your todo list, you're not really done: Go off and think of more items to add to the queue.
But realize that tasks can include things like sleep, talking with friends, taking an hour off for a mindless activity, or whatever else keeps you sane.P.S., if I don't reply to this thread immediately, it's because I've put other things higher on my priority queue.
