LW - A couple productivity tips for overthinkers by Steven Byrnes

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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A couple productivity tips for overthinkers, published by Steven Byrnes on April 20, 2024 on LessWrong.
1. If you find that you're reluctant to permanently give up on to-do list items, "deprioritize" them instead
I hate the idea of deciding that something on my to-do list isn't that important, and then deleting it off my to-do list without actually doing it. Because once it's off my to-do list, then quite possibly I'll never think about it again. And what if it's actually worth doing? Or what if my priorities will change such that it will be worth doing at some point in the future? Gahh!
On the other hand, if I never delete anything off my to-do list, it will grow to infinity.
The solution I've settled on is a priority-categorized to-do list, using a kanban-style online tool (e.g. Trello). The left couple columns ("lists") are very active - i.e., to-do list items that I might plausibly do today or tomorrow, with different columns for different
contexts (e.g. "Deep work" items for when I have a block of time to concentrate, "Shallow work" items for when I don't, and before a trip I might temporarily add an "On the airplane" column, etc.). Then going off to the right, I have a series of lower- and lower-priority columns - "Within 1 week", "Within 2 weeks", "Within 1 month", "Within 2 months", "Within 6 months", "Someday / maybe", "Probably never".
I don't take the column titles too literally; the important part is that if something doesn't seem that urgent or worthwhile, I find it very easy and satisfying to drag that task one or two columns to the right. I'm not giving up on it forever! But the further right we go, the less frequently I'll look at that column. So I get the benefit of a very manageable to-do list without needing to make the irreversible commitment of deleting items that I haven't done.
(Following David Allen, I also have a "Waiting for…" column for items that someone else is supposed to do. I also have a "Done" column, which is arguably pointless as I just delete everything off the "Done" column every couple weeks, but the deleting ritual is nice because I get another chance to make sure I've really finished it, and is also an excuse to feel happy about my recent accomplishments.)
2. If you find that you're reluctant to delete (or heavily edit) a piece of text / slide that you worked hard on, copy it into a "graveyard" first
I hate the idea of deleting something I wrote, because what if I change my mind and decide it's better as it is? I'd have to rewrite it, and maybe it wouldn't come out as good the second time! Gahh!
(Granted, lots of text editors have affordances for going through a document's history to retrieve deleted text. But I find them a hassle to use.)
Instead, whenever I'm deleting or rewriting more than a couple words, I simply copy-and-paste the current version into a disorganized "graveyard" of text snippets, paragraphs, sections, etc. at the end of the document (or in a separate sister document).
Realistically, I almost never pull anything out of the "graveyard". But sometimes I do pull things out - not only in the course of whatever I'm writing, but also sometimes months after I finish. And more importantly, knowing that the graveyard is there and easily accessible makes me feel more comfortable "killing my darlings" in the first place.
Ditto for editing slides and so on.
3. If you find that you're reluctant to throw out papers, make it fast and easy to file them
Sometimes I get something in the mail that I probably will never need to look at, but I don't want to throw it out, because what if I'm wrong and I'll need it after all? Gahh!
This is what a filing cabinet is for.
In Getting Things Done, David Allen writes "If it takes longer than sixty seconds to file something, you won't file, you'll stack." (See
here for his practical tips...