*hands you a baby aradia *hands you a baby aradia

Task Management for Planning Averse

AKA Even People with Zero Direction in Life Deserve Nice Things

So if you don’t already follow Dana K. White on YouTube, you should. She’s the author of the blog A Slob Comes Clean and several books. What I’m going to talk about below is heavily inspired by her work which is why I wanted to cite her upfront but also seriously go check her videos out if you’re trying to declutter and get organized. 

Right now I’m mostly using her videos and it’s genuinely the only decluttering method that has ever worked for me. And one of the reasons it works for me where others haven’t is that it is a system that doesn’t rely on feelings or valuation. 

I realized that as I’ve gotten better at task management in my life - though lord knows the move has made that more complicated - I realized that not using feelings or judgement based questions is what really helped me. I also realized that I had 100% completely given up on goals. I had neglected to set goals for a couple years now and weirdly I got more productive, not less. What gives? 

Step 0: Give Up on Goals and the Fantasy Self

What I realized is that goals were really just a product of what a lot of decluttering folks call my “fantasy self”. My fantasy self woke up at 5am and did little work out videos but trying to leap to become that fantasy self fucking sucked. It was not enjoyable once the novelty wore off and it largely didn’t present enough benefit to justify doing it. 

Which meant I would stop and then I would feel bad about myself and I’d pick up bad habits to cope with the feeling and then I was worse off than before. 

So when I stopped setting goals, I stopped declining at least because there wasn’t that rebound effect where I self soothed using way too much ice cream and binge watching whatever I could find. I hit a baseline that wasn’t amazing but the stability was helpful. Only when I gave up on the fantasy life did my actual life get better.

Capitalism loves the fantasy self. People spend so much money to try to become their fantasy self and often don’t even benefit that much from it. Then the guilt of seeing that stuff around can lead folks to by more stuff to cope with the guilt. The only people winning are the companies who you buy from. 

Also, folks with executive dysfunction have a very hard time picturing what done looks like. So trying to picture your “ideal day” is low key a nightmare experience for someone like me. Mission Statements can be real intimidating when you’re not totally sure what those words will mean for the decisions you make. Vision boards…I’m sorry I know some folks love them but I really do not enjoy them. They’re a sensory overload of an experience to me from the crafting to taking them in. I’ve never made a vision board that really did much for me. 

I’ve also recently learned about The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin and I am definitely a Rebel. So too much pressure internal or external and I will find the quickest exit possible. Rebels are a small but sizeable portion of folks according to the authors research. Which means there are likely other people out there who also find goals to be way too much fucking pressure. 

This is all to say - fuck goals. But you’ve still got a life to live so how do you move the needle in the positive direction? 

Step 1: Initial Brain Dump

People would always tell me to brain dump but never really explained how. They were like “Yeah just get all this stuff in your head out on paper” and I’m like…I don’t even know what’s in my head unless I go looking for it. 

So I offer you two questions and two methods of gathering answers. 

When trying to brain dump, ask yourself: 

What do I spend a lot of time thinking about? 

What are the specific tasks associated with these subjects? 

If you can’t think of next specific tasks associated with those subjects, it does necessarily mean you need to strike it off you list, it’ll just be a little tougher to know where it fits. 

Sometimes I’m able to sit down and answer these questions all in one go. And sometimes it’s much easier to keep a running list in my phone and when I realize I’ve been thinking a lot about something I add it to the list. Then later I can sit down and come up with specific tasks or process it in step 2. 

Step 2: Task Punnett 

In step 2 I look at my list and ask myself two questions:

Do I already spend time doing this? 

Will I face a negative result if I don’t do this? 

This gives four categories a list item can be sorted into. 

Yes/Yes

The goal here is to prevent burnout so you don’t stop spending time doing these. Common ones are cooking, cleaning, or seeing friends. So it’s important to look at each of these and make sure they’re as easy and enjoyable as possible. 

It also helps to know what your minimum is for each so that if you’re burning out you can scale back to your minimum effective dose is that allows you to avoid the material harm but give you a break - like getting take out or having freezer meals on hand, knowing what the most important cleaning tasks are and only doing those, and at least sending texts or voice memos to friends to connect.

Yes/No

The goal here is to protect this time as much as possible. It’s what tends to go when Yes/Yes and No/Yes tasks start to get out of hand. That will look different for different people but it almost always involves capping Yes/Yes and No/Yes time and not allowing yourself to go over. As you might have guess most hobbies go here. 

Some people will need other people to help encourage them to keep doing it. Some people will need flexibility so it feels like they’re truly choosing it. Some people will need to refresh their memory that these kinds of activities are just as necessary as other types of tasks. 

Guilt and shame is a big one that keeps people from having many things going in this box but it can also be a lack of self knowledge too. We’re not exactly encouraged to explore what we truly deeply love. Mental illness can also make this box tricky as anhedonia can make everything feel bleh. 

In all of these cases, I really suggest making some sort of reflective practice something you try to keep in this box so you can notice what triggers guilt, what sparks joy, and what just isn’t working after a while. Doesn’t have to be journaling in the traditional sense. I used to turn on my computer cam and just talk but now that I need more audio privacy, this has been really helping me.  

No/Yes

I fucking hate this box in all honesty. It’s the one that drains me and makes me feel like shit to look at this list but also I feel the most badass when I actually complete something off of it. 

The goal with this box is to figure out what’s blocking you from this being a Yes/Yes. Basically finish the sentence “I don’t really want to do this because…” and you’re on your way. Most barriers can be dealt with. I used to not believe this but I promise it’s true. 

This is where having a therapist, good friend, or community where you can bounce ideas off of can really make all the difference. A reflection practice can also really help get a different perspective too.  Sometimes the barriers loom so large in our mind that adaptation seems ridiculous or impossible. Take advantage of different perspectives. 

Automation, delegation, and congregation (body double or a group) are incredibly useful tools here. Don’t do more here than you need to. 

What’s key in the second question for this section is that this is something you have the power to impact the outcome of. If you don’t have the power to change the outcome or you’ve done all you can, then the task is bracing, mitigating, and accepting, not dealing with the topic/task head on. 

No/No

There are 2 main things I find in this category - shit I agreed to because I felt obligated and someday maybe projects. For shit I agreed to, the only remedy is to just get out of it, to bail in the most graceful way possible. I also try to prevent stuff from winding up here to begin with (no more event planning for me for a while). 

For someday maybe projects, I like to keep a space - usually Notion - where I can collect my thoughts on it, projects, and pain a picture of what it would take to make it a Yes/No task someday in the future - always keeping in mind what I could do with the materials and time I have available right now. I’ve picked a quite a few of my No/No tasks this way and made them things I do regularly because I left myself those breadcrumbs for later. 

Step 3: Prioritizing without Feelings

So now you have your tasks organized into these buckets and know what to keep in mind with each. So…what do you do with them? 

A lot of people will tell you to prioritize and do the hardest first while your willpower is strong but I say fuck that my willpower is never strong so we’re going to do easiest first to build up some confidence. 

No/No - For obligations that no longer serve me, I bail. For someday maybe projects, I write up some quick notes in my little system in Notion.

Yes/No - gather and prep materials, block out time, ask someone to do it with you or find a group if needed

Yes/Yes - gather and prep materials, if burning out, switch to minimum viable

No/Yes - figure out the barriers, automate, delegate, congregate, list next steps

Stuck Tasks - Too much to go into here but this video is helpful.

Sometimes I bounce around a bit - dealing with a Yes/Yes task will suddenly give me the guts to deal with a stuck task, getting out of a No/No obligation will make a No/Yes task look easier. So I don’t limit myself to this. But when I’m having trouble I go back to the list and just trust. 

If I have avoided doing a No/Yes task for anywhere from several days to several weeks - it’s official a stuck task and I bounce it there while I work through other No/Yes tasks to deal with later. 

Sometimes time pressures will dictate that things need to be handled before others - that’s fine. But usually a crunch will either show you that you will not in fact face a negative consequence after all or give you a motivation boost to carry you through some of the difficult tasks. 

Step 4: Doing it again

So when do you do it again? 

I do my brain dumps on Sundays and sort them into area of life lists so I can work on them by theme or focus but honestly whenever. When I was really in the throws of some bad mood shit I’d only do it every few weeks or so. Any amount of doing this generally had lead to a better life though. 

What about stuff I’m not thinking a lot about? 

That usually means either you’ve got such a good system for it that it’s running on autopilot so why mess with success, the possible reward is not appealing enough, or the possible consequences don’t freak you out enough. 

This isn’t really a system I use for creating like…a good life by a neurotypical standard. It’s what I use to manage the stress, concern, and daydreams I’m having right now, to get things off of my plate and grow my confidence. 

So will this mean everything gets managed? No. But it does mean the stuff most likely to keep you up at night does. Which is a huge fucking boon. 

Conclusion

There’s some more intricacies in this too like moving No/No projects to Yes/No and No/Yes projects to Yes/Yes - it’s not the same strategies in my experience - but this is already running long. 

I’m only replying because this is something I know trips up other neurodivergent folks like myself and it’s worth talking about.

If you like goals, you’re gonna see goals. 

If “get dressed” is a goal to you, then sure this is a “goal” system. 

But most folks wouldn’t look at their to-do list and go “ah yes, my goals” 

Goal: (n) the object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result.

Listing out concrete steps to a goal doesn’t then make every individual step a goal because they aren’t in of themselves the desired result (usually). 

I use this matrix specifically get stuff off of my mind and then know what to do with and about it. I do this because if I leave stuff in my head it quickly becomes a stream of negative self talk and disrupts my sleep. 

Stuff that is on your mind =/= Goal

For instance, I need to update my drivers license and it in no way furthers a particular goal for me. It’s just on my mind and needs doing. 

Making it serve a goal like “Being an adult” or “Get my life together” would then make that action loaded in a way that makes me more likely to avoid it because now doing it or not doing it “says” something about me and that’s a lot of pressure. Some people thrive under that pressure which is honestly great for them. I tend to dissociate or run when that pressure gets to a certain point. 

Which is why I personally recommend more folks consider not making goals. 

This is one of nature’s most anatomically perverse of all beasts. A FISH, like a carp or a bass or a beta is a fish, but it bent its body straight up only to bend its head permanently back down. It stretched its skull into a pipe. It tapered its tail like a lizard, specifically like a chameleon. It can also move its eyes independently by the way, you know, like a chameleon. Fun fact, it can change color to express its mood, like you know whatever does that. It doesn’t properly swim anymore. It buzzes its few remaining fins like an insect’s wings to float itself around at a snail’s pace. It lives its whole life clinging to coral branches or seaweed, which means it decided to become a “tree dweller” in an environment where gravity didn’t even matter anyway. The males get pregnant. They make noises at each other by rubbing some of their neck bones together. Every day, EVERY DAY a mated pair does a little dance and a little neck bone song so they remember which two seahorses they were. They’re a beautiful precious obscenity. Nothing so adorable ever made such a strong case against a logical creator.

They have as little skin and meat as they could get away with. Their skeleton is almost all they are.

Lions have a 20-30% success rate on their hunts, depending on daytime and if they’re in a group. Great white sharks, anywhere from 40% to 80%, depending on the size and skill of the individual. Dragonflies, which are one of the most successful terrestrial hunters, can hit about 80-85%. Seahorses? 90% success rate, sometimes more. Only a fraction of their prey escapes that powerful vacuum. They’re incredibly precise. 

If you touch them, they feel hard, because of the skeleton underneath their skin. Their tails are being studied to make coiling bridges, because of how strong that interlocked structure is. Different species range in size from over a foot long, to barely an inch.