{"id":10100,"date":"2025-02-20T15:07:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T19:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/for-less-anxiety-and-more-life-treat-your-to-do-list-like-a-diner-menu\/"},"modified":"2025-02-20T15:07:46","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T19:07:46","slug":"for-less-anxiety-and-more-life-treat-your-to-do-list-like-a-diner-menu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/for-less-anxiety-and-more-life-treat-your-to-do-list-like-a-diner-menu\/","title":{"rendered":"For Less Anxiety and More Life, Treat Your To-Do List Like a Diner Menu"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

Several years ago, Cal Newport<\/a> of Deep Work<\/a><\/em> fame recommended that I read Four Thousand Weeks<\/em>:\u00a0Time Management for Mortals<\/em><\/a> by Oliver Burkeman. <\/p>\n

The first few chapters hooked me, and I devoured it over 48 hours or so, capturing hundreds of Kindle highlights in the process. It\u2019s quite unlike anything I\u2019ve ever read, and one of my favorite chapters is titled \u201cCosmic Insignificance Therapy,\u201d which Oliver graciously permitted me to share on the blog and on the podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In August 2023, Oliver wrote a piece for his newsletter titled \u201cLists are menus\u201d that stuck with me, and I have thought about it since. You can find it below.<\/p>\n

For more Oliver, subscribe to his newsletter here<\/a>. In case you missed it, also check out his newest Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts<\/a><\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Enjoy!<\/p>\n

Enter Oliver Burkeman<\/h2>\n

More and more, I think my issues with conventional productivity advice \u2013 indeed, with the very notion of productivity \u2013 boil down to this: Spending your days trying to\u00a0get through\u00a0<\/em>a list of things you feel you\u00a0have to do\u00a0<\/em>is a fundamentally joyless and soul-destroying way to live, and most productivity problems, like distraction or procrastination or a lack of motivation, can be understood as internal rebellions against a life spent so dispiritingly. And yet most of what passes for expert advice just involves organizing the list differently, or getting through the list more efficiently. Whereas the real trouble lies in the whole underlying idea of life as a matter of slogging your way through a list.<\/p>\n

I realize, of course, that you may not be a \u201clist person\u201d like me, with my long and somewhat ridiculous history of experimenting with lists in notebooks, digital lists, lists organized by context or project or priority, and so on (and so on and so on). But if you adopt a sufficiently broad definition of a to-do list \u2013 ie., as any set of things you feel you need to get done \u2013 then it\u2019s clear that really, lists are everywhere. Your \u201cto read\u201d pile is a list. A morning routine is a list (of things you think you need to do each morning). That nagging collection of home improvements you keep meaning to get around to? That constitutes a list, too.<\/p>\n

Or maybe you\u2019re one of the many people who go through life with a vague sense that there are several important milestones you need to hit before you can truly deem things to be in full working order \u2013 to start exercising, find a relationship, work through your childhood issues, sort out your finances? Well, that\u2019s a list, too, in the sense I\u2019m using the word here: a set of tasks you believe you need to get through, in order to feel that everything\u2019s OK.<\/p>\n

As every productivity geek knows, there\u2019s a certain pleasure in crossing things off lists. (Some of us have been known to add tasks we\u2019ve already completed, so as to cross those ones off, too.) But in the long run, I don\u2019t think this can make up for the basic joylessness of a life spent doing things in order to have them done \u2013\u00a0and spent, moreover, in the belief that true peace of mind can only come once they\u2019re all out of the way. Which of course they never are.<\/p>\n

All of which leads to a question I\u2019ve found powerful to reflect on:\u00a0what if we understood our lists as menus instead?<\/p>\n

For many years I lived in New York \u2013 where, as anyone familiar with the city knows, there\u2019s a kind of diner you can visit at which you\u2019ll be handed a huge menu, bound in fake leather, with perhaps eight or nine laminated pages featuring every imaginable permutation of egg-based dishes, sandwiches, burgers, waffles and salads that the kitchen is capable of conceiving. I love these menus for the sense of crazy abundance they impart. And they help clarify a critical way in which a menu differs from a to-do list: picking just one or two items from a menu is something you get<\/em> to do, not something you have<\/em> to do. It\u2019s not a problem<\/em> that there are so many more things you could order than you\u2019d ever be able to consume in a single visit. It isn\u2019t the case that in an ideal world you\u2019d eat them all, but because you\u2019re not efficient enough at eating you\u2019ve got to settle for just one or two of them, and feel like a failure. That would be ridiculous! The abundance is the point. And the joy is in getting to eat at the restaurant at all.<\/p>\n

I take it you can see where this is going when it comes to to-do lists: increasingly, I find myself treating my other lists as menus, too. Your \u201cto read\u201d pile or digital equivalent, for example, is most certainly best understood as a menu \u2013 a list of things to pick from, rather than one you have to get through. But the same applies to my list of work projects. Sure, the contents of the menu is constrained by various goals and long-term deadlines. But the daily practice is just to pick something appetizing from the menu, instead of grinding through a list.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019ll come as no surprise to learn I\u2019ve been getting more done this way, too \u2013 not least because I\u2019m harnessing the energy of what I feel like doing, rather than suppressing it in order to push onwards through a list.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the kicker: aren\u2019t all to-do lists really menus anyway, whether I choose to think of them that way or not? After all, if there are vastly more things I\u00a0could\u00a0<\/em>do with any given hour or day than I actually\u00a0can\u00a0<\/em>do \u2013 if there are a million ways to build a business, to be a better parent, spouse or citizen, live healthily, and so on, yet only time for a handful of them \u2013 then in fact we\u2019re always picking from a menu, even if we delude ourselves that what we\u2019re doing is getting through a list.<\/p>\n

One great benefit of doing this more consciously \u2013 of facing up to the fact that lists are menus \u2013 is that it shifts the source of gratification. The reward of pleasure in your work, or a sense of meaning, no longer gets doled out stingily, in morsels, en route to some hypothetical moment of future fulfillment when the list is complete and you can finally feel fully satisfied. Instead, the real reward comes from getting to pick something from the menu \u2013 from\u00a0getting to dive in<\/em>\u00a0to one of the vast range of possibilities the world has to offer, without any expectation of getting through them all, just like the pleasure of sitting down to a good meal. Which means you get to have the reward right now.<\/p>\n

Oliver Burkeman is the New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals<\/a> (2021) and Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts<\/a> (2024). He lives in Yorkshire in England.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright 2023 by Oliver Burkeman. Reprinted with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

Related<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

The Tim Ferriss Show<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>is one <\/span>of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than one billion downloads. It has been selected for “Best of Apple Podcasts” three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it’s been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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