Somewhat ironically, the day after the eclipse felt like coming out from under a cloud. I didn’t want to make a big deal of this last week (I hate articles full of excuses), but honestly I hadn’t been able to find the bandwidth to write in awhile, probably because I tried to get back into the swing of things too soon after having a baby1.
I just checked, I wrote my first newsletter when my oldest was 8 months old — coincidentally the age my youngest is now.
So now feels like a good time to take stock of whether I still feel like my “productivity systems” are functional and share what I’ve learned about how to stay sane with a lot on my plate.
First, the most impactful advice I ever got about juggling priorities comes from Nora Roberts, one of the most prolific and successful authors alive.
“The key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic and some are made of glass. And if you drop a plastic ball, it bounces, no harm done. If you drop a glass ball, it shatters, so you have to know which balls are glass and which are plastic and prioritize catching the glass ones.”
Step one of juggling priorities is getting the balls into your hands — you have to know what needs to be done before you can do it. Crucially, you can’t forget — and I’ve gotten a lot more prone to forgetting things now that I’ve got kids. Some lucky folks are able to maintain mental tasks lists of 20–30 items without any trouble; I am not one of them. Enter “quick capture” — recording important thoughts immediately, before they disappear like soap bubbles into the ether.
Some people like doing quick capture on their phone, but I get nerdsniped by notifications and muscle memory way too easily. I find it’s a lot easier to go with analog methods and therefore tend to keep pens and paper scattered around my house. I tend to be a bit of a squirrel; there’s a notebook, a pen, and a mason jar full of water in basically every section of the house I wind up in, sometimes multiple per room.
If I’m already on my phone or at the computer, of course, it’s different. I put interesting books on my Amazon wishlist, I use discord bots and email scheduling to set reminders for myself to follow up on things, I’ll capture articles I want to look at later in Readwise Reader2 …which means I don’t need to add reading the latest article from
Wes Kao
to my to-do list — because it’s filed away in something I already check. That’s the key.
Put your tasks somewhere you’ll actually see them.
Dedicated task apps like Todoist or Amazing Marvin or Habitica are great if you actually check them. I never do, so my lists are in places like:
magnetic “picture frames” I use as dry-erase boards for my fridge
written out in an always-open notebook my desk (I keep going back to plum paper although it’s annoying I can’t just by the refills for the discbound pages)
on sheets of paper that are easy to insert into my notebook, or put next to it for maximal visibility, thanks to the life-changing existence of a discbound planner.
in my email inbox (because I believe in Scott Alexander’s advice to reverse any advise you hear, and while my inbox is usually empty, I get there by ignoring most of the inbox zero recommendations)
on my calendar.
Ask with task apps, calendar apps are great if you actually check them. The most feature-filled calendar app in the world is pointless if it’s not able to interface the one(s) you share with other people, so bias toward using the ones you have to check — for me, it’s a Google calendar because I have to care about events with (1) colleagues and (2) family. Adding more complexity to that mostly feels like … adding complexity. I’m sure other people have different use-cases and like fancier options, but for me, the important thing is low-stress.
Most fancy calendars don’t work on all my devices, anyway. A pox on iOS only tools, I say.
I allow myself five habits and allow myself five actual to-dos per day. Anything more than that goes into an aspirational bucket that isn’t linked to a specific day, or else it’s as overwhelming as a box on my calendar that reads “4 more.” I try to keep them batched not by priority but by what kind of space (physical or mental) I need to be in to do them i.e. outside tasks vs. household tasks vs. deep work vs. quick things to bang out on a computer.
Tasks lists have two purposes:
to get things out of my head, so I can stop thinking about it and worrying about forgetting it.
making sure I actually do important things when I get a free minute or come up for air on a project and can’t remember what I was supposed to be doing.
making sure I actually remembered to do everything, when I think I am done with a project.
I have a paper agenda book with a few lines per day and a box where I put regular things I try to do every day, like clear out my slack pings or update my testing queue. Separately, I have other lists that are sort of a backlog of things I want to get to eventually but aren’t top-of-mind this week. One such list is for all the gardening stuff I wanted to do in the Spring. I have other lists for all the articles and tests I’d like to write. Long-term house projects. That sort of thing. Some are in Obsidian, some are in Notion, some are in dry-erase on my fridge.
None are on post-its attached to my computer monitor (anymore).
Be proactive — and let your sense of overwhelm guide you
Beating yourself up because you aren’t achieving your goals is not particularly effective. Figuring out why you aren’t achieving your goals is a lot more useful, and sometimes, the reason is “because my goal is not actually a bigger priority than other things in my life.”
Giving up goals is hard! There are huge amounts of cultural pressure on most of us to ‘never give up’ and ‘keep persevering’ and ‘do anything you put your mind to.’
Back when I had more time — and before the advent of AI sort of killed my love of writing fiction — I really wanted to write a serial novel along the lines of “have you ever considered finding yourself unexpectedly married to a cultivator... in a world with magic inspired by productivity systems, not (just) video games...?”
The idea was to together themes of personal growth, community-building, and the everyday life adventures, for people interested in a palette cleanser for stories where the moral is “take insane risks to progress to insane heights of achievement” in ways that inspire teenagers to grow up into people like Larry Page, Elon Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried.
But giving up is, in my opinion, a critical part of adulthood. Pyrrhic victories are a lot worse than graceful surrender, and a negotiated truce with your task list is a hell of a lot more effective than burning out. As someone who has left two careers on the heels of suicidal depression, I have learned to pay very careful attention to the warning signs of an out of control to-do list.
Communicate with yourself and anyone who might be impacted before you drop balls, but do it in a positive and upbeat way. Focus on solutions other people can help with, don’t panic, and know when to cut and run. Above all, remember the difference between glass balls and rubber ones.
If you have never seen Fight Club, it’s worth the time. I love my job, and my family, and my life — but, well, I am not my f*ckin’ khakis. My lists are in service to my happiness, and I will not sacrifice my happiness on the altar of productivity.
Habitica never worked for me, but some light gamification can be helpful, as long as you understand what kinds of games actually appeal to you. I am more of a Stardew Valley / EVE Online / Rimworld / 4theWords kind of gamer, these days, although once upon a time I played a lot of Path of Exile, League of Legends, Team Fortress Classic, and Counter-Strike. If I don’t need spreadsheets to play, it’s not for me. People who enjoy first-person shooters and lootboxy games will have different ways of managing their dopamine hits. But for me, I like watching the numbers go up (or down) as I make progress. I like crossing things off of lists — it’s very satisfying… but it’s never been enough to help me win National Novel Writing Month, or beat the dragon in Minecraft, or for that matter
I get a lot of value out of adding things to accomplishment lists, but I can’t bullsh*t myself. “Number go up” isn’t what motivates me; meaningful community is. Looking back over something like a praise folder is useful for a lot of things, but at the end of the day, I get things done because getting them done helps people I care about.
1
Another factor is that most of what I’ve been reading has been parenting and new mom related stuff, and if there’s anything I want to discuss on the open internet less than parenting philosophies, I can’t think of it. Besides, I doubt most of my readers are interested in following the controversies surrounding the latest updated mastitis avoidance guidance… or would view me as an authority on the subject.
2
Disclaimer: I work for Readwise. I was a user with a newsletter before I was hired, tho. None of the links are affiliates links, all opinions my own, etc.
