todo lists as narrative devices

every one of us is living in some kind of story. who are you? what is your name? where do you live? are you a student? what do you like to do for fun? oh you like football? what’s your favorite team? why? do you want to go to university? why? what would you like to study there?

okay see, so, all of the answers to all of these questions, they make up part of the story of your life. “i’m not very good at math”, “i don’t really like books”, these are all part of the story too. there’s no right or wrong here. it’s your life, it’s your story

ok here’s the tricky thing. you’re still young. there’s stuff you know well, like what kind of foods you like, and there’s stuff you don’t know so well, like “what job should I get?” & the people in your life – your parents, your friends, are always telling you what you should do

some of them might be very direct about it, like saying “you should be a lawyer”. but most things are indirect. they might say, “artist? artist can make money meh? hopeless lah!” – there are many messages in this little utterance! and you may not even realize what you’ve heard

shit, I said utterance

there are many messages in what they just said. they aren’t just saying “you should not be an artist”. they are also saying “you should make money”, “artists cannot make money”, “making money is dignified and respectable”, “if you don’t make money you deserve to be made fun of”

and so if you’re not careful, you may spend many years avoiding making art, even though you want to make art, because at some emotional level, a part of you thinks of art as something to be made fun of, something your friends and family don’t like

now to be clear I’m not saying you *should* make art! all of this stuff is super tricky. it’s very tempting to like someone cool like your uncle (wink wink) and then think that you should just do everything your uncle does or says. but that would be the same mistake. do you see?

so what should you do? that is *your* job to figure out. nobody else can do this for you, not your parents, not your uncle, not your friends. this is both the scariest and most exciting thing about your life: it’s yours. it is your responsibility. and you WILL make mistakes

but making mistakes is the only way to learn. the smart thing to do is make small cheap mistakes so it hurts less. if you want to look like a rock star, try painting your nails before you get a tattoo. if you want to start a business, do a popup store before you rent a shop

“visakan-maama what does this have to do with todo lists”

ok jeez i’m getting there! so. we are talking about stories. learning about yourself. you know how different you and your brother are? and how you like different things? and you’re good at some things he isn’t?

different people are different like that. we all have our own skills and specialties. like… the avengers. each person is best suited for certain tasks. now if you want to have a good time in life, you want to get yourself into situations that you are well-suited for

the challenge is, it takes a lot of time & effort to figure this stuff out. ideally, school should help you with this, but it doesn’t do a good job. bc it’s very costly to really fully develop a a person, emotionally, mentally, socially. school doesn’t have the budget for that

so here’s the problem! a lot of young adults, aren’t very well-developed. and they get a lot of inaccurate ideas about themselves, from their families, from their friends, from society, from advertising. and they’re nervous and uncertain, in part bc they don’t have experience yet

it’s especially rough when it seems like everyone else is having a great time, especially when you see their instagrams and tiktoks. this is a kind of tricky optical illusion. you must be careful not to let the illusion let you reject the truth of your own experience

it’s frustrating that school has you sitting at a desk for hours on end, doing homework according to a fixed syllabus, being graded in isolation on standardized tests… all of this has a dehumanizing effect. literally, it makes you feel less human and more like a robot

remember earlier when we talked about the story of your life? notice how it starts with what you love, what you enjoy… and then when you reach your teens and 20s, it starts getting replaced with what your job is, what your career is. people get sucked into the prestige game

i’m not saying prestige is bad! prestige-seeking is very normal. as humans we are social creatures, we care about other people, we want to be cared for. the tricky thing is, you might think you want prestige, but often what you really want is what you think prestige gives you

and for a lot of people, prestige-seeking is a kind of painful bargain. the work required to climb the prestige ladder is often tedious, unsatisfying. long hours. unpleasant tasks. if you’re not careful, it all takes you further and further away from being in touch with yourself

some of the people who are living prestigious lives got there because they did what they loved, and it brought them there. others suffer their way to the top. if you get to know them you’ll see they are truly miserable. because they are divorced from themselves. devil’s bargain

anyway, okay, let’s talk about todo lists! do you have todo lists of your own? suppose you do. I think most people have subconscious ones in their minds even if they don’t write it down. I must work out. I must lose weight. I must get a promotion. I must get more followers.

Maybe you want to learn the guitar, or to dance, or to code. Maybe you want to meet new people. I do recommend making lists of everything that comes to your mind, because once you write it down, you get to read it out loud and see how you feel about it

This is what I mean by “todo lists are externalized narrative devices”! Your feelings about the tasks on your todo list are influenced quite a bit by the story of your life. And the other way around! What tasks are you excited about? Why? What tasks do you feel dread about? Why?

the things that you want to do (or think you want to do) are part of the story that you tell yourself about who you are.

socially speaking, your actions define you more than anything else. so your todo list is a way of imagining who you could be, who you could become

now here’s a problem. if your todo list is full of things that you don’t really want to do, it’s going to make you feel like shit. bc you are making yourself imagine a life that you don’t actually want to live. the tasks are frustrating to do, &if you don’t do them you feel worse

(well. how bad you feel about not doing tasks on your todo list, is actually something that varies from person to person. do you see how loopy it gets? because some people might see their todo lists as sacred, while others might see it as just some dumb list who cares!)

but what i’m trying to get you to see is that no todo list exists in a vacuum. everything exists within some context, within some situation. “clean your room” may usually be boring and tedious but it suddenly becomes much more compelling when you’re going to have a cute girl over

*everything* happens within some context. and the tragedy is that a lot of people are trained to become context-insensitive to themselves, their own lives, their own interests, and then they bully and beat themselves up for being insufficiently excited about their todo lists

if you make your todo lists from a place of love, after reflecting on what your true values and priorities are, then it will be a satisfying, exciting place to inhabit.

if you make your todo lists from a place of fear – FOMO, status anxiety, neediness, etc – you’ll hate it

the better aligned your todo list is with your actual values, what you really, deeply want in life, rather than what you’ve been told to want, the easier it will be for you to do the tasks on them. because you’re swimming with the current, not against it

“but I’m a kid I don’t know what I really deeply want in life”

ok, that’s a good thing. it would be suspicious if you were too certain; statistically you’re be likelier to be deluded than enlightened. but think back to the nails and popup stores! make your tasks SMALL + CHEAP

your todo list is meant to work for you, not the other way around! it’s a tool of self-expression and self-exploration. it’s a way of figuring out who you are. you don’t have to do everything on it. you are a work-in-progress. you will figure out better things as you go

the more you steer your todo list and your actions towards a cycle of doing what you love, the more you unlock more motivation, the less effort it takes to do anything on the list. because it fits within your larger vision for yourself. that’s what I mean by “narrative resonance”

That’s about all I got, man! yea sometimes I use big words but I’m honestly not trying to impress anybody, they’re just what come to mind. I’m always happy to explain anything if it doesn’t make sense. I love ideas. I love words. This is my jam. I don’t need a todo list for this