I’ve been using todo lists/task management systems, in every form, for years. I’ve spent so much goddamned time learning methodologies that I could be a professor in them…

Yesterday, I had a breakthrough talking to @m_ashcroft. The truth is: I hate them all. Here’s why.

Nothing will take the joy out of a task more than focusing on the success it could be a small part of. Project-based task management asks that we break the things we want to manifest into little bite-sized pieces that we can do in service of that Ultimate State of Completeness.

The mindset this creates is one of evaluating every activity in terms of its little tickbox that needs to be checked in order to contribute to the checking of a much bigger, badder tickbox.

In essence, it asks of every activity: Are you serving a Larger Goal? Are you JUSTIFIED?

Now we’ve successfully taken the experience of the present moment, the exploration of our activity, and all possible fun that might be, and transformed it into a square Unit of Productivity for The Future (a Future in which, presumably, we will be justified ourselves, worthy).

Obviously, for medium-to-large things to get done, it’s helpful to break them down into smaller steps, but to create a more humane system of project/task management, a missing step is to UNJUSTIFY each broken down action: How could this task be performed for its own sake?

Of course, we (sickos like me) can make any process into more Work, including this one. To avoid the temptation to go through a project and â–˘ UNJUSTIFY EVERY ACTION, simply unjustify the next one. How does my next activity need nothing at all to be “worth it”? No outcome, even.

Both the simplest and the most difficult part of the trick is contained in the concept of “worth it” itself. There’s a LOT of culture and psychology and cultural psychology tied up in that concept.

Maybe the concept of “worth it” itself is the problem.

Anyway, this is actually how I’ve been treating some of my most “important work” for some time now without realizing it.

It turns out, doing things this way, I’ve never been 1/10th as productiv—THE DOOR TO ALL AWARENESS AND PLAY AND ENJOYMENT SLAMS CLOSED, ETERNALLY, ONCE MORE