The Magic of Getting Things Done
Doing things is really hard. As John Mulaney puts it, “it is 100% easier not to do things than to do them.” It’s the easiest thing in the world to just not do anything. And even when you start to do something and you make progress on that thing, it doesn’t feel that great. It’s not until you finish doing that thing does the thing make you feel better. (that was the worst writing I’ve ever done, even if it was a schtick)
The reality is that most things don’t feel satisfactory or worth doing until you finish them. For the longest time in my life, I felt a lot like Jimmy Neutron villain Finbarr Calamitous, known for being an incredible genius and inventor who would inevitably fail because he was unable to ever finish anything. I used to struggle to finish projects I started, and I hated doing homework or other tasks that weren’t engaging to me.
The exception to this rule was reading. I’ve always been a voracious reader, sometimes reading several books a week. Even if I didn’t enjoy a book, I would often finish it anyways, just to be done with it. The feeling of satisfaction I got from finishing each chapter was often enough of a reason to keep me turning the pages. I kept chasing those small bursts of fulfillment until I finished each book and felt an even bigger burst of fulfillment.
I don’t read books the same way anymore, because for some reason I keep reading nonfiction books with never-ending chapters. However, I’ve started to apply this method to get things done. In retrospect, I now understand why the 100 days project was one of the first long-term projects I’ve finished to date; because it was more like 100 smaller projects (like chapters!), each creating its own burst of energy and satisfaction upon completion.
Last week I wrote about bullet journaling and how I use daily to-do lists combined with timeblocking. That wasn’t working too great for me, since I would end each day with a bunch of unfinished items, often because they were too big to finish in a single day. As a result, I’ve started dividing each task into a bunch of smaller tasks. This sounds super basic and obvious, but it’s really made a huge difference in how I feel at the end of the day and my motivation to do more.
Feeling productive from completing these small chunks of work has helped me feel much happier at the end of a given day, more than a lot of other things in my life. I’m really starting to sound like a productivity obsessed “guru,” aren’t I?
Drops of the Week
where I *drop* recommendations of cool things this week
Longform Article
“How Astrology Took Over the Internet” by Zan Romanoff - interesting read about the proliferation of Astrology in the Internet era on platforms like twitter and through memes.
Illustration Series
Being A Writer - cool group of illustrations to show the writing process. It touches both my love of illustration and my love for writing. How perfect!
Playlist
MOTOWN + RATPACK + - a playlist made by my friend Theresa with some nice tracks from the 60s. A lot of them are sources of samples from popular hip hop songs!
Thanks so much for reading! If you have any comments/concerns or fan/hate mail for me, you can reply to this email.
Love,
Nikhil