I often find I'm intimidated getting started on something, I just imagine it will be tedious. What I think I need is to partly just recognise that, and partly get used to low-effort ways of getting started, reading a faq, trying some experiments, without worrying if it's not instantly obvious, as it usually becomes clear quickly. But I don't know what would apply to you.
as soon as I have to manage without a list it all goes pear-shaped.
Lots of simple things sounds exactly what lists are good at; delegating the "remembering" so you can concentrate on the "doing". Why DO you ever have to manage without a list?
Oh, there's always some reason it works out that way. Somebody will tell me things I need to do in some inconvenient situation where I'm not next to a computer or piece of paper. Or lots of people will tell me things in different situations, so that I write them all down in different places and suddenly having to remember a list of the places I wrote them down isn't any easier than remembering all the things themselves. Or the list gradually grows from "too small to bother writing down" to "too large to cope without writing down" and I don't realise it until it's two items into the latter range. Or the list is a public one that other people can put things on (e.g. work bug tracker) and contains lots of stuff that's (for immediate practical purposes) ignorable drivel, but you have to remember which of the 130 things on there are not drivel and actually want sorting out. Or ...
That definitely makes sense. But it also points to obvious things you could try to do, if you feel this is a recurring problem, even in a small way. For instance, carry a small notebook for this sort of notes, to insist they never get put down in random places, or refuse to accept things told to you in person without a confirming email later (you probably do this as much as possible anyway), or build the habit of recognising when someone is telling you something complicated enough to write down, and make them wait until you find something to write on (this seems harsh, but non-garbling the message is almost always to everyone's benefit -- after all, if they were organised, they would have their own notebook :)).
Another really important point I forgot to mention in my last comment was: sometimes the list of things to manage are all things I have to remember about at particular times, or in particular circumstances, or that the next time I'm doing some other thing I have to do it in a particular way.
Lists work well when you're operating in 'pull' mode: you know you need something to do, so you go to the list, pick off the next thing, and make a start. When you finish that one, it's back to the list.
But in 'push' mode, when the various things I have to remember about all need to grab my attention in particular, different, confusingly overlapping sets of circumstances ... if I were to use a list to remember all of them then I'd have to consult the list all the time just in case there was something on it relevant to the current situation, and that would (a) be a huge expenditure of effort, and (b) not work anyway because after checking the list 99 times with no results my eyes would glaze over and I'd miss the thing I should have spotted the 100th time.
Ah, good point. "at a particular time" can be ameliorated with a good calendar, but "at a particular place" is still difficult. Dave Allen recommends having a separate TODO list for all the most common places (although that only works if most of the tasks are in the same few places). There are apps which will use a smart phone GPS to trigger a reminder, but you probably don't want to start relying on one for that.
I agree that's difficult and I don't have any good solution. The best I've done is to take a good guess when I'll be doing that and schedule it for then (sat: "if I go shopping, do X in town") or just accept I'll never remember it and make a special trip.
"at a particular time" can be ameliorated with a good calendar, but "at a particular place" is still difficult.
Indeed, and other kinds of circumstance (next time I see a particular person, next time I'm scheduling a meeting, next time I write code that does a particular thing, next time I'm in the sort of general situation that I've just decided needs me to start list-making more proactively) are even harder. I have thought before that a GPS-based reminder system would be quite handy, but it wouldn't be the whole story even then – what I really need is a reminder system with read access to my thought processes, because it needs to respond to arbitrary semantic criteria on my current situation and the only thing that even works that out is my brain :-)
a separate TODO list for all the most common places
... the most obvious example of which is a shopping list, of course, which actually is the one list that I do carry everywhere with me.
what I really need is a reminder system with read access to my thought processes, because it needs to respond to arbitrary semantic criteria on my current situation and the only thing that even works that out is my brain
I agree that's what you really need, but it's also possible that maybe 90% of the time the problems can be fixed with something lesser, and then the amount to just remember may become actually manageable :)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I often find I'm intimidated getting started on something, I just imagine it will be tedious. What I think I need is to partly just recognise that, and partly get used to low-effort ways of getting started, reading a faq, trying some experiments, without worrying if it's not instantly obvious, as it usually becomes clear quickly. But I don't know what would apply to you.
as soon as I have to manage without a list it all goes pear-shaped.
Lots of simple things sounds exactly what lists are good at; delegating the "remembering" so you can concentrate on the "doing". Why DO you ever have to manage without a list?
Oh, there's always some reason it works out that way. Somebody will tell me things I need to do in some inconvenient situation where I'm not next to a computer or piece of paper. Or lots of people will tell me things in different situations, so that I write them all down in different places and suddenly having to remember a list of the places I wrote them down isn't any easier than remembering all the things themselves. Or the list gradually grows from "too small to bother writing down" to "too large to cope without writing down" and I don't realise it until it's two items into the latter range. Or the list is a public one that other people can put things on (e.g. work bug tracker) and contains lots of stuff that's (for immediate practical purposes) ignorable drivel, but you have to remember which of the 130 things on there are not drivel and actually want sorting out. Or ...
Lists work well when you're operating in 'pull' mode: you know you need something to do, so you go to the list, pick off the next thing, and make a start. When you finish that one, it's back to the list.
But in 'push' mode, when the various things I have to remember about all need to grab my attention in particular, different, confusingly overlapping sets of circumstances ... if I were to use a list to remember all of them then I'd have to consult the list all the time just in case there was something on it relevant to the current situation, and that would (a) be a huge expenditure of effort, and (b) not work anyway because after checking the list 99 times with no results my eyes would glaze over and I'd miss the thing I should have spotted the 100th time.
I agree that's difficult and I don't have any good solution. The best I've done is to take a good guess when I'll be doing that and schedule it for then (sat: "if I go shopping, do X in town") or just accept I'll never remember it and make a special trip.
Indeed, and other kinds of circumstance (next time I see a particular person, next time I'm scheduling a meeting, next time I write code that does a particular thing, next time I'm in the sort of general situation that I've just decided needs me to start list-making more proactively) are even harder. I have thought before that a GPS-based reminder system would be quite handy, but it wouldn't be the whole story even then – what I really need is a reminder system with read access to my thought processes, because it needs to respond to arbitrary semantic criteria on my current situation and the only thing that even works that out is my brain :-)
a separate TODO list for all the most common places
... the most obvious example of which is a shopping list, of course, which actually is the one list that I do carry everywhere with me.
I agree that's what you really need, but it's also possible that maybe 90% of the time the problems can be fixed with something lesser, and then the amount to just remember may become actually manageable :)