How many vacation days does it take to change a lightbulb?

I stopped using a todo list a while back. I put tasks into my calendar as meetings, then reschedule those meetings if I need to. Having all of the work already assigned a time slot (sometimes far in the future) means that when I have nothing scheduled, I don’t feel like I should be taking an item off the todo list: it’s genuinely free time.

I was surprised by the wave of emotion I felt when I deleted the giant todo list I’d been working from. I choked up a little. Whew. That thing had been hanging over me.

But when I started my vacation on Tuesday my mind was racing with things I wanted to do during my time off, so I brain-dumped it all into a doc. As I write this, I'm looking at this Google document, (it’s called "Tanya's vacation list"), and there are so many bullet points in that freaking document. I have a door frame I want to paint, two writing side quests I need to finish up, overdue email, some drainage work in the back yard, a ton of articles I’ve been meaning to read, clearing out the freezer, replacing my office chair. There’s an audio book I bought three months ago and never listened to. And it would be a good time to schedule a dentist appointment. And I should sort out the books I want to give away. And both of the lightbulbs in the hall are dead… 

Ugh. I remember why I hated having a todo list.

Book update
I’m still working on Chapter 4 of the Staff Engineer’s Path. It’s currently called "Are You Starting Something?" (but that might change) and it’s about choosing which things to work on when there’s a vast universe of possible projects you could do–which there almost always is.

Whether it’s written down or not, the universe sure likes to provide a giant todo list of doom. And there’s this funny phenomenon where there’s so much important stuff to do that you end up not being able to choose, so you just pick up easy unimportant things instead. Hunter Walk calls this snacking, working on the low-effort, low-impact stuff because it’s there and it’s easy and there’s no big decision involved.

So I was thinking about what to write about that, and I realised I didn’t want to just talk about “do/drop/defer/delegate” and deciding which work is most important. Because, definitely, putting things in order and choosing high priority work is a good idea, but there’s more to it than that. Sometimes you’re trying to prove yourself, or show impact for a promotion, or build skills, or do something fun, or just rest your tired brain. Sometimes the objectively most important project is work that nobody else will value, or it’s something you’ve done a dozen times and won’t learn anything from, or it’s the kind of work that makes you tired even to think about it. There are times when snacking is actually the right decision, if you’re doing it deliberately.

So I found myself writing about what individuals need from a project.

What do you need?

I said once on Twitter that my key skill was making tortured analogies to classic video games so of course I drifted into thinking about how The Sims did this. Each Sim had a bunch of needs, modelled as a bar to fill up, and when one of them got low, you’d need to do something about it or the Sim would get cranky or stressed out or unhealthy. I wondered if we could think about work needs like that, except, instead of paying attention to your levels of hunger, comfort, social, and so on, you're keeping an eye on your time, energy, social capital, credibility, skills growth, and happiness. When your bar for one of those is filled up, you don’t need your next project to be good for that need. When one of them is dipping uncomfortably low, you might choose a project to help it. Some will make it better, others will make it much worse.

Is this the right list? I’m not sure! I’m going to write on it for a while more and see where it goes. My latest tortured video game analogy might evolve into something useful, or I may throw it out before Chapter 4 heads to early release later this month. We’ll see! In the meantime, if you'd like to read Chapters 1-3, they're here.

Deleting the task list. Again.

On Tuesday, I looked at my giant overwhelming task list of doom, couldn’t decide what was most important, and went out to Jamaica Bay wildlife refuge instead. Good call. It turns out that photographing snow geese was exactly what my low-energy pandemic-anxiety brain needed. Snow geese weren’t on my todo list, but ignoring the list and taking some unscheduled time was the right thing to do.

Lesson learned, again. I’ve just finished moving the list into my calendar–in some cases scheduled quite far in the future–and now I’m deleting the list again. My calendar says I’m going to change the lightbulbs today, and then the rest of the day is mine to do what I want with. Such an overachiever.

Whatever kinds of activities or projects you need right now, I hope you’re finding ways to get them. And if you’re anywhere near Jamaica Bay, I recommend a visit while the geese are still around.