Stoic TODOs
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I've been having a really productive month. Lots of little
successes and one big, sprawling one. I describe the highlights
of the big one in this phlog post:
[1]
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~ratfactor/phlog/2020-02-23-my-setup
Aside: I'm not a huge fan of having links at the bottom of
phlog posts. Mainly because I'm usually curious about the
link and I don't like to jump around a lot while I'm
reading, it interrupts my flow.
But I suppose an argument could be made that having links
mid-stream is interruptive in its own way. Hmmm...what do
you think? At any rate, on with the post!
So February has been a good month and I'm giving a lot of the
credit to my new system of project/goal tracking and the concept
of having a monthly "theme". I'll probably write more about that
soon. (I'll be performing a monthly wrap-up for myself in just
three more days and I'm sure I'll be excited to tell about how
it all turned out then.)
Anyway, I wanted to jot out a quick post about one of the
monthly goal/TODO lessons I've learned this month.
(And, ha ha, okay, it's also an excuse to test the Gopher
export/publishing script I just wrote today...)
Stoicism
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Stoicism's popularity seems to have been on a rise for a while
(I feel like I've been steadily hearing more references to
Stoicism in the last 4-5 years). I find a lot of it to be both
appealing and useful. I decided to take the plunge a couple
weeks ago and now I'm currently reading a page-a-day from the
book _The Daily Stoic_.
I'm still new to it, but one of the principles of Stoicism that
seems to crop up a lot is recognizing the things that are in our
control and the things that are not.
I find this relates to one of my biggest failings in creating
good TODO lists.
TODOs
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Pleasure: a list of TODOs with check marks through them all.
Pain: a crumpled up incomplete TODO list in the trash.
The List is seductive and dangerous. Sometimes writing a List
feels intense like a forbidden delight in a Clive Barker novel:
an exquisite torture of possibilities to succeed and fail.
So, I've learned a *lot* of things about making good TODO lists
this month, but I still managed to "fail" in a big way. I mean,
I was really successful, but I don't feel like celebrating just
yet because I've got this big chunk of goals that are not
checked off. It burns at my soul in a very un-Stoic way.
And it's been slowly dawning on me as I've gotten wiser over the
last week or so that there is a common denominator across these
TODO items: none of them are 100% in my control! Directly or
indirectly, all of them depend on people and circumstances. I
don't control people and circumstances. I control me.
So, I'm frustrated and disappointed with myself for not getting
these things done and...that's ridiculous.
Ridiculous because:
* It's keeping me from being satisfied with my hard work.
* It's out of my control.
* Feeling down about them does _nothing_ to change the
situation.
So I'm going to reach over right now to my notebook and put a
big, heavy 'X' through everything that wasn't 100% in my control
and... holy cow, that was all of the incomplete items.
Whew, now I just need to let that sink in. :-)
And in the future, I'm going to try to peg my success on stuff
that I can actually control.
Have a good one, underground dwellers!
