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1/ I've finally realized how the way I think about tasks is so different from most people: I see them as options, not as obligations
2/ Each task is a possible pathway, a proposed alternate universe, a hypothesis that X action will lead to Y outcome. But it's only a hypothesis, and there are thousands of them, and I only get to test a few hypotheses a day. So I have to pick carefully
3/ Because I feel no implicit obligation to actually *do* any given task I capture, making up as many as I can becomes almost like a game. I can capture silly tasks, paradoxical tasks, outrageous tasks, counterintuitive tasks, bizarre tasks, existential tasks. The more the better
4/ And I've found the more I capture, the less obligation I feel. The less attached I become to any particular one. As they accumulate by the hundred, any remaining lingering idea that I might someday complete them all evaporates
5/ So paradoxically, as I accumulate more and more, the horizon that I'm focusing on gets nearer and nearer. I'm not optimizing for some far-off mystical "task list completion," I'm trying to maximize the quality of each day's options
6/ This leads me to some strange places, such as putting off tasks that might seem both urgent AND important, but that don't optimize a given day. I find myself willing to pay the consequences of postponing even serious tasks, because I know there is an endless series of them
7/ This makes me come off as shortsighted and hedonistic, to others and even myself. I really do optimize for each day, doing the tasks that make me feel most alive. I have zero self-discipline, and find it almost impossible to complete tasks I don't enjoy
8/ My saving grace is that I package everything up in neat packets, and a surprising number of urgent and important tasks can be solved using a combination of these packets
9/ This is a different kind of creativity, a bureaucracy-navigation skill I think I learned from the Brazilian "jogo de cintura," or "game of the hips." It's a kind of fatalistic patience combined with wild maneuvering that's also apparent in the way they play soccer
10/ This approach depends on being able to manage large numbers of tasks. And you need a certain carefree boldness to dramatically discard, reshape, demote and promote, and occasionally "refactor" your task database as new priorities emerge
11/ In contrast to how I see most ppl use their task list, as a kind of sacred mandate of immutable obligations that they can do nothing to push forward or back, demote or promote, redefine or simply discard. People love to have a boss, and they will make one out of their tasks
