DonationCoder.com Software > The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009

Live as if Today was a Quantum Superposition of the the Rest of your Life

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jgpaiva:
 ;D Love the idea!

mouser:
Paul that is a really interesting approach.. i love the idea of it.. i feel like my days are very unstructured and would really benefit from something like that.

My original post was just a thought really, and not a particularly deep one -- but your idea of making days very different is really intriguing to me -- especially since i find it very hard to do context-switching on anything shorter than a day long period.

I think this is an important an often-overlooked issue.  Some people seem to be able to switch working contexts very quickly.  They can have a meeting at 10am and then switch to working on a different project at noon.  Others, like me, find that almost impossible -- once i switch to thinking about one project, it's basically stuck there for at least a day.

Paul Keith:
I think this is an important an often-overlooked issue.  Some people seem to be able to switch working contexts very quickly.  They can have a meeting at 10am and then switch to working on a different project at noon.  Others, like me, find that almost impossible -- once i switch to thinking about one project, it's basically stuck there for at least a day.
--- End quote ---

Yeah, same problem here. I don't think they're switching tasks though.

Remember that was why David Allen added that confusing stuff about contexts. My guess is that the ones that are great at doing this simply are the best at not caring.

Paul Graham in his procrastination article states something about learning not to stare directly at the big problem.

David Allen thinks if you're confident in your storage, you can learn not to care about what you don't see and instantly care about what you do see.

Not really a solution but I thought there might be something in pointing out that possible distinction.

mouser:
Well in fact that is the biggest takeaway for me from David Allens GTD, and i find it incredibly useful.  I've written about it before on the forum.

Basically for me you could boil the *useful* lesson of Allen's GTD for me personally to one sentence, and throw away all of the details and specifics in his book:
"Write down stuff where you can find it later, and then let it go from your consciousness."

This is an incredibly simple idea, but for me it was one of those "ah ha" moments when i really started doing it (i personally keep notecards of all project ideas, todo items, etc.).  But it really does make a huge difference for me that i can convince my brain is does not have to be actively trying to remember and keep in mind all of these thousands of issues and ideas..  I can offload them to paper and then free up my working mind for other things.

I've also been using this strategy to help me not perseverate (get suck on) programming project ideas that i just don't have time to work on -- I let myself have a few days to plan it out, brainstorm about it, chew it over, write it down, etc.  And often that's enough to let me brain not feel like it has to keep bringing up the idea and working on it in spare moments.

Deozaan:
I (think I) know this was just a tongue-in-cheek joke, but I've been seriously thinking about this since I first read about it.

Neither method seems to really work. You've already pointed out the drawbacks of living as if today were the last day of your life, but living as if you had another 100 years would probably make one think his death was so far away that he had plenty of time and, being the procrastinators that we inherently are, nothing would change. Alternating each mindset every day would be too schizophrenic but much longer periods than that and you'd end up with the same problems.

So I've been trying to come up with a better idea on something that would really motivate me to, as you described so well, "live in the moment, take chances, and enjoy the wonder and delight of our daily existence" while also "[taking] the long view, [planning] for the future, and [finding] the discipline to do the things that may not be fun today but will lead to happiness down the road." It's hard to think of a concept that communicates that idea and portrays the emotion that would provide adequate motivation to live in such a manner. Maybe it's just best to say:

"Live in the moment, take chances, and enjoy the wonder and delight of our daily existence while also taking the long view, planning for the future, and finding the discipline to do the things that may not be fun today but will lead to happiness down the road."

It's certainly not a cute, sentimental, Tweetable statement. But I think it works. It's functional and conveys everything it should. That should be enough.

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