in preparing to write this i found this piece entitled 10 Ways to Do What You Don't Want to Do but it felt off-target for me. It says "Do a little, then get up." But, you know what, I want to know what that little is. How do I do a little? How do I do a little that helps me get it done?

I'm sure it helps, but I wanted to get more precise. Perhaps that is my downfall.

as a nice bonus to writing the IRRESISTIBLE TO-DO list for myself i ended up doing the task because they are actually open this late ha ha ha ha ha

that was fun. but! i'm also in a particularly manic and productive mood right now. would i have been able to write that straight through? i probably would have gotten lost and a little listless along the way. i bet that's what would have happened. i enjoyed breaking that little essay-writing task into four chunks to be written one at a time. started and finished. i made myself a nice to-do list! though like all to-do lists, the atomization of items may need to be more or less on any given day.

my favourite part of the above is the first chunk i wrote, the part about "Imagining a task that is truly irresistible." it's a very appealing task in itself -- perhaps even a little irresistible :)

i'm going to go write myself an IRRESISTIBLE TO-DO item for my ebay customer support call now.

1. my brain sometimes is broken, but i assume it's kinda like other people's brains only more prone to distraction. that is, everyone is susceptible to some degree. i just feel it more keenly.

Hello. I am droqen. Sometimes I think my brain is a little broken -- there are days when it feels like I can bring myself to do absolutely nothing. (That's never quite true; there are plenty of extremely easy tasks that I can generally do, like... watching a movie, or playing a very familiar videogame. But let's stick with this thread for now.)

Even if people tell me that they feel similarly sometimes, I think that I am alone in my brokenness, or at least that I am more extreme along this axis than some people. But. Even when I think this way, I try to remind myself that I am still a human being, that my brain is not functioning in a qualitatively distinct way, but rather a quantitatively distinct way. That is, if I swing from 0% to 100%, someone else might swing from 50% to 100%. But they still respond to the same brain-inputs positively and negatively, generally speaking.

With that in mind, I'd like to talk about to-do lists and how they affect me, supposing that if something affects me it will also affect you and other people I know -- just, my examples may seem a little extreme! I will say, "When [THIS] happens, I literally cannot do the task," and you might think, "Well hold on, when [THAT] happens I can do the task just fine!"

That may be so. But I can only operate under the assumption that the brokenness of my brain is having an extremely strong impact on my ability to do a task (100% -> 0%) while it has a lesser but still present impact on your ability to do a task (100% -> 50%). Rest assured, when I feel mildly demotivated (50%) I can certainly bring myself to do something. I am capable of bridging that gap. But, although for me it may be a matter of night and day and for you it may be a matter of a minor loss of motivation, I am writing this with the thought that even defeating a minor loss of motivation may be, somehow, valuable to you.

I have paid very close attention to hits to my motivation because they tend to impact me strongly. I believe that other people don't necessarily pay as close attention because they do not have to, but I think it still costs you: to force yourself to do something when you are at 50% expends energy and perhaps creates stress over time, even if you do not have to face it as directly as I do in my day-to-day life.

That is my assumption.

2. 'to-do lists' are terrible because they don't respect scope. we need better words.

What goes on a to-do list? Anything and everything. The basic idea of a to-do list doesn't represent or respect scope; I might put "do five jumping jacks" next to "get back together with my girlfriend" and the next day wonder why only one of them got done.

[here I decided to merge this point with 3. break down various types of tasks. 'to-plan'. 'to-achieve-someday'. 'to-forget-about'. 'to-start-and-finish-in-the-same-[minute/hour/day]'. 'to-start'.]

We need a better taxonomy to understand what the problem is. Some tasks are truly 'TO-DO': things that need only be done. But many more are things that could be broken down further. We might call these 'TO-PLAN' items, aggregates of multiple undefined 'TO-DO' items. For example, suppose I write "Bake a cake" on my to-do list. When it comes time to do it, I may have to break it down mentally into multiple steps: (1) Check my cake recipe and my pantry and write a grocery list of everything I'm missing (2, only if needed) Go to the grocery store and purchase all the needed items (3) Bake a cake.

(Of course, "Bake a cake" might be broken down further into the recipe, but we already have a to-do list given for that, so it would be redundant; like with the grocery list, it is a to-do list within a to-do list.)

Some items are not even 'TO-PLAN' items: these are the far-off items that contain unknowns. I might decide I want to "Earn $1000 by selling videogames in the next month." This isn't something that can simply be done, or even broken down into a reasonable plan! We might call this type of item a 'TO-STRIVE' item, or being less charitable, a 'TO-HOPE' item. Of course, we can still make a plan, but it's not the same sort of breakdown as 'TO-PLAN' to individual 'TO-DO' items. I can perhaps plan to make a videogame and put it out for sale, to market it, etc. But some aspect of this item is not directly achievable (unless of course you really know what you're doing when it comes to selling/marketing things and you have the data! I, however, do not).

Now, getting a little heavy, there are also those items that I suppose a person says that they want to do, but they really only think so far as wanting to say they want to do it. These items, I think, fuel procrastination. [next slide]

4. 'to do tomorrow' is only valuable if it turns into 'to do today' which is only valuable if it turns into 'to do right now'.

Imagine you have a task you want to write into tomorrow's to-do list. For that task to get finished, when tomorrow comes you have to actually do it. When writing a task into a future to-do list imagine doing it right now; what's stopping you? Feel the task deeply and consider what it would be like to decide that you should stop writing your to-do list right now and instead do this task.

Do you feel yourself falling forward into it easily, a great gaping hole which threatens to consume your being? Do you see the beginning and the middle and the end of it? If you don't, you need a better to-do list item.

With an exception: If there's something getting in the way of doing it right now, make sure it's something that will not be in the way by the time you have to do it. If you have to have a conversation with someone who is not available right now but will be available tomorrow, that's OK. But imagine they were there: would something be in your way?

As an example, I have had to call ebay customer support for the past few days but I keep forgetting or putting it off. Shit. Of course, I can add it to my to-do-tomorrow list and forget about it. The excuse is that I literally can't do it right now, the customer service offices are closed. But if I close my eyes and imagine it's tomorrow and I have to make that call... what's stopping me from doing it?

If my to-do list item is "Call ebay" I'll need to muster up the mental energy to remember why I'm calling them, what information I need handy, what I'm going to say. Maybe this makes me sound like a stupid baby who can't put his brain together (which, like, yeah, that's me on a bad or even mediocre day, but isn't it you, sometimes, too?). But it helps. If I'm preparing, truly preparing, to make this call tomorrow, what can I do to make this task a "falling into a hole" easy task? I can prepare myself a list of links to click on, things to say and do. Tomorrow when the task comes around if everything is ready for me I will absolutely do it because I've closed my eyes and asked myself, "Is doing this task truly irresistible? And if not, how can I make it so?"

This will produce a true to-do list item.

suppose my goal is to write a complete expansive exploration of how anyone gets anything done ever - would that help me get things done when i don't want to do things? let's find out. here's a rough outline.

1. my brain sometimes is broken, but i assume it's kinda like other people's brains only more prone to distraction. that is, everyone is susceptible to some degree. i just feel it more keenly.

2. 'to-do lists' are terrible because they don't respect scope. we need better words.

3. break down various types of tasks. 'to-plan'. 'to-achieve-someday'. 'to-forget-about'. 'to-start-and-finish-in-the-same-[minute/hour/day]'. 'to-start'.

4. 'to do tomorrow' is only valuable if it turns into 'to do today' which is only valuable if it turns into 'to do right now'.

5. ???

Quote from: p58There is an institution of chess which can be distinguished from any individual game of chess. Because of this institution it is possible to take a knight out of a box of chessmen and describe its capabilities, even though the knight is not then functioning as a knight, that is, as a piece in a game of chess.

And it is also possible to set out of the chess pieces in a checkmate arrangement without having to play a game of chess in order to achieve that state of affairs. Accordingly, although it is not possible to achieve the prelusory goal of chess aside from the institution of chess, it is possible to achieve it aside from a game of chess.

The word institution here is very useful. Some game designers have proposed that before designing a game one should design a 'toy' or a 'sim' or whatnot. I myself have pursued a similar idea of 'playables'. "What Should We Do With Our Brains?" claims "The greatest trick the videogame industry ever pulled was convincing the world that videogames were games in the first place."

Here I understand that a videogame is a Suitsian institution.

Pingback: The Grasshopper
p.s. I should probably get this book out of the library and give it another shot. I've only read the first couple chapters!

After all this, I can relate quite well to the Grasshopper, who is evidently an idealist and also a fool without any answers. I see in his death my own death.

Skepticus: "Then tell me which you feared, Grasshopper. You alone are in a position to know."
Grasshopper: "I wish there were time, Skepticus, but again I feel the chill of death. Goodbye."

In struggling to find the answers, I don't think Grasshopper is playing a game, but doing instrumental work. In Utopia, one would not need to struggle to find the answers... I suppose that I would enjoy such a world. Philosophy is both play and not; the answers are forever out of reach, but we do not know if the answers exist at all.

The last Suitsian games are infinite in nature, pursuits of the unknowable. Supposing that there will be no reward for building a better house, a person might still desire to know, "Can a better house be built?" There cannot ever be an end to such forms of knowledge. Knowing a new thing spurs on new realms of knowledge.

I need Bernard Suits to read The Beginning of Infinity. But, like Grasshopper, he is dead.

After which Grasshopper promptly dies.

Quote from: p160Come now, Grasshopper, you know very well that most people will not want to spend their lives playing games. Life for most people will not be worth living if they cannot believe that they are doing something useful, whether it is providing for their families or formulating a theory of relativity.

Quote from: p158-159the culture of Utopia will be based on plenitude. The notable institutions of Utopia, accordingly, will not be economic, moral, scientific, and erotic instruments - as they are today - but institutions which foster sport and other games. But sports and games unthought of today; sports and games that will require for their exploitation - that is, for their mastery and enjoyment - as much energy as is expended today in serving the institutions of scarcity. It behoves[sic] us, therefore, to begin the immense work of devising these wonderful games now, for if we solve all of our problems of scarcity very soon, we may very well find ourselves with nothing to do when Utopia arrives.

Quote from: p156having become bored [in Utopia], [John Striver] wants some activity to be engaged in. [..] he wants to work at something, and he selects carpentry. Now, there is no demand for houses which John's carpentry will serve, because all the houses of whatever possible kind are already instantly available to the citizens of Utopia.

What kind of house, then, should he build? Surely it would be the kind whose construction would give him the greatest satisfaction, and we may suggest that such satisfaction would require that building the house would provide enough of a challenge to make the task interesting while not being so difficult that John would utterly botch the job.

[..]this activity is essentially no different from playing golf or any other game.

There is a part coming up where the idea of 'knowledge-seeking' games is discussed, which may defuse my present thought, but I'd better write it down anyway.

It seems as though there is a nesting problem. q1 and I discussed Tetris, and games of skill, within which the gaining of skill, or as we described it in a prophetically appropriate way, the 'building a house' (of knowledge (within the game)) is pleasurable, is part of the joy of the play.

When Grasshopper (in the quote above) describes a task not difficult enough for John to botch, that sounds pretty boring to me. I want a challenge that I can botch! Something that is demanding, which contains secrets to discover, which requires my whole self. Maybe that's just an issue of game balance, though.

In Grasshopper's Utopia I suppose that the perfectly balanced game would not be designed but would be made magically available to me, but if a machine can give me not just what I say I want but what it knows I actually want then am I making any decisions at all? As a game designer I feel like the act of designing games is something I value doing -for myself- and I cannot imagine someone else doing it in a way that I like better, but it is also a thing I do -for instrumental reasons-.

In a Utopia where there is nothing to do but play games, then what about making them?