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> When you tick the box the relief is palpable I don't find this to be true (in my case) for repeatable tasks like chores. Sure, ticking the box may provide a

> When you tick the box the relief is palpable I don't find this to be true (in my case) for repeatable tasks like chores. Sure, ticking the box may provide a little relief, but knowing that it has to be done all over again the next week, endlessly, doesn't help with finding satisfaction.

pavlov 3y ago
Same here. Behind every neat list of boxes to tick, I see an endless array of lists stretching into the future, only terminating in the moment of my death. Ticking those boxes is like adding bricks to the wall that is burying me into the cellar.
- austinjp 3y ago
  You are not alone! I never experience positive feelings when crossing an item off a to-do list. It feels like a slow creeping death to me. Walling oneself into a tomb - exactly.
  - jorvi 3y ago
    I mean, do you feel the same about taking a breath and the follow-up exhale? Life must extremely stressful to those for whom every discrete thing is a countdown to death.
    - coremoff 3y ago
      You don't have to think about breathing. Many people consider the day-to-day grind of a job as being akin to death; for OP and similar people, these daily tasks are the same thing
    - pavlov 3y ago
      We're talking about the emotions related to the specific format of ticking off tasks in a to-do list. Some people in this thread say they feel a palpable relief, even joy. I feel the opposite. I don't suppose anybody feels so strongly about breathing (except maybe some yogi?). For me, it's about the uniformity of the checkbox experience. It reduces any achiement to "just another brick in the wall". Apparently for others, the same uniformity turns the tasks into something more like a game. At the end of a day, I like to go back and look at artifacts that resulted from my efforts. Maybe I wrote something, or drew some sketches, or at least had a productive conversation in digital format. Re-reading those outputs feels meaningful in a way that looking at ticked boxes doesn't. (In my day job I work on video meeting recording systems, among other things. One of the projects that I currently find very motivating is to produce better artifacts from meetings, e.g. automatically created video summaries with context-relevant graphics. Maybe my own love of reviewing work artifacts is why this feels so relevant, and somebody else will find them meaningless because the act of ticking a box — "Discussed X with N" — provided the same satisfaction.)
- brainzap 3y ago
  stop tickin
- 0xEF 3y ago
  This exchange between HN users replicates conversations my wife and I have, almost to the letter. I suffer from GAD, where she suffers from ADHD, and while our neurodivergences are actively managed, we do notice that they tend to polarize us on certain topics. To-Do Lists is one of them. Where she sees a way to organize herself and gets pleasure from "completing" lists, I see attempts to quantify an overwhelming amount of tasks that has no conveivable end. For my part, I have learned to adopt the mindset of "work stops when I decide I am done working," while is a healthy action for me that helps prevent my anxiety from running the show (and running me down), where as that same mindset would be abhorant to my wife. The funny part is that we both maintain about the same level of productivity overall, despite the opposing methods. I suppose the take-away I am getting at is things like To-Do lists are going to be subjective, but the markets (particularly individuals that benefit from To-Do Lists) are going to treat them like a panacea for all that ails us. I refer to this promotion as Life Hack Hype, but I don't know if anyone shares my veiw or experiences on that.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    Yeah, I can definitely see that. For me, the stress differential is between an unquantified problem vs a quantified problem. But with GAD, I can definitely see how the process of quantifying the problem could become its own problem! Really glad for you that you've found balance with your wife!
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Fun fact: GAD and ADHD aren't opposites, but quite related. Meaning, you can end up suffering the symptoms of both. FWIW, despite being more like GP's wife than GP themselves, "the process of quantifying the problem could become its own problem" is very much the case for me. It leads to some unique, hilarious (to an outside observer) ways of suffering.
      - IggleSniggle 3y ago
        It's super common to have both. It develops naturally from understanding how ADD affects you and stressing about what you might be forgetting or overlooking or whatever now. They can feed on each other. It's easy to imagine how ADD symptoms could develop from GAD. I was born with ADD, but developed GAD in my 30s in response to living with ADD.
TeMPOraL 3y ago
For me, those are two different modes of thinking. As in: Mode 1: I've accepted that chores are something I have to do. I have "system 2" reasons to be doing them, such as "keeps me in good standing with my spouse", "makes home stay pleasant to be in, as opposed to a biological hazard", or "not doing them will later make me question my status as an adult human being". Those are all "system 2" things though, meaning they provide approximately zero motivation at the moment when I'm attempting, or considering, to do a chore. What works here is, using "system 2" motivation to refine my TODO list - an activity that is self-rewarding by giving me that "oh I am very smart" feeling. And then, when it's time to do something, having checkboxes to tick provide some immediate reward I can parse "in the moment". Not much, but better than the default, which is no reward at all. Mode 2: All this is modern recreation of the Sisyphus story. Chores are a waste of life. It's one of the biggest tragedies of humanity that we haven't yet automated away or designed away the need for maintenance work. Developing self-cleaning, self-maintaining technologies and solutions sounds like a line of work I'd like to be in. -- The important bit of personal growth for me was to put a force field between those two modes of thinking, so that I can still process thoughts related to Mode 2, without having them interfering with my ability to do anything.
klyrs 3y ago
For me, for chores specifically, that sense of motivation comes from a lifetime of past failures. I walked away from a kitchen full of dishes when I moved out of my first apartment, face red in shame, and the landlord ate my deposit. Other friends of mine have had infestations, because their food messes didn't make it back to the kitchen. I saw their cleaning/extermination bills. There is a distinct fear "if I don't manage to break this down into bite-sized pieces, I will suffer XYZ embarrassing/costly consequence" which truly motivates me. And now with a child, "if I don't manage to instil this habit into this child without making it palatable and manageable..." There are other consequences too -- in-laws induce shame. Other visitors induce shame, but if I have them every other week, the panic-clean before the arrival of in-laws is only slightly bigger than the routine-clean. And with 2 adults and a child with ADHD, messes build fast if we don't stay on top of it. So when I say ticking the box is it's own reward... really it's the "I'm keeping the monster at bay with the stroke of a pen at the end of 10 minutes of drudgery."
yadingus 3y ago
If you're already doing those tasks over and over there is no point in adding them to a todo. When I started using a todo list I was very conceptual about it "this is something that must be done, therefore it goes on the list. But really it's more about which tasks need to be present on a list. I don't need to be reminded to eat every day, and if I do, that's the job of an alarm. On the other hand if I need to soak lentils while I make breakfast tomorrow, that might go in my todo list.
damascus 3y ago
I took a queue from Seth Godin in his book 'This is Marketing' where he basically breaks it down to: People like me do things like this. I adopted a certain baseline of living as part of my core identity. People like me keep the house clean always, and tidy mostly. People like me remove anything with an odor immediately (50% full trash but it smells? gotta go right now.) Couple that with the 2 minute rule "if it takes less than 2 minutes do it right now" and it's really changed how I live.

pavlov 3y ago

Same here. Behind every neat list of boxes to tick, I see an endless array of lists stretching into the future, only terminating in the moment of my death. Ticking those boxes is like adding bricks to the wall that is burying me into the cellar.

austinjp 3y ago
You are not alone! I never experience positive feelings when crossing an item off a to-do list. It feels like a slow creeping death to me. Walling oneself into a tomb - exactly.
- jorvi 3y ago
  I mean, do you feel the same about taking a breath and the follow-up exhale? Life must extremely stressful to those for whom every discrete thing is a countdown to death.
  - coremoff 3y ago
    You don't have to think about breathing. Many people consider the day-to-day grind of a job as being akin to death; for OP and similar people, these daily tasks are the same thing
  - pavlov 3y ago
    We're talking about the emotions related to the specific format of ticking off tasks in a to-do list. Some people in this thread say they feel a palpable relief, even joy. I feel the opposite. I don't suppose anybody feels so strongly about breathing (except maybe some yogi?). For me, it's about the uniformity of the checkbox experience. It reduces any achiement to "just another brick in the wall". Apparently for others, the same uniformity turns the tasks into something more like a game. At the end of a day, I like to go back and look at artifacts that resulted from my efforts. Maybe I wrote something, or drew some sketches, or at least had a productive conversation in digital format. Re-reading those outputs feels meaningful in a way that looking at ticked boxes doesn't. (In my day job I work on video meeting recording systems, among other things. One of the projects that I currently find very motivating is to produce better artifacts from meetings, e.g. automatically created video summaries with context-relevant graphics. Maybe my own love of reviewing work artifacts is why this feels so relevant, and somebody else will find them meaningless because the act of ticking a box — "Discussed X with N" — provided the same satisfaction.)
brainzap 3y ago
stop tickin
0xEF 3y ago
This exchange between HN users replicates conversations my wife and I have, almost to the letter. I suffer from GAD, where she suffers from ADHD, and while our neurodivergences are actively managed, we do notice that they tend to polarize us on certain topics. To-Do Lists is one of them. Where she sees a way to organize herself and gets pleasure from "completing" lists, I see attempts to quantify an overwhelming amount of tasks that has no conveivable end. For my part, I have learned to adopt the mindset of "work stops when I decide I am done working," while is a healthy action for me that helps prevent my anxiety from running the show (and running me down), where as that same mindset would be abhorant to my wife. The funny part is that we both maintain about the same level of productivity overall, despite the opposing methods. I suppose the take-away I am getting at is things like To-Do lists are going to be subjective, but the markets (particularly individuals that benefit from To-Do Lists) are going to treat them like a panacea for all that ails us. I refer to this promotion as Life Hack Hype, but I don't know if anyone shares my veiw or experiences on that.
- klyrs 3y ago
  Yeah, I can definitely see that. For me, the stress differential is between an unquantified problem vs a quantified problem. But with GAD, I can definitely see how the process of quantifying the problem could become its own problem! Really glad for you that you've found balance with your wife!
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Fun fact: GAD and ADHD aren't opposites, but quite related. Meaning, you can end up suffering the symptoms of both. FWIW, despite being more like GP's wife than GP themselves, "the process of quantifying the problem could become its own problem" is very much the case for me. It leads to some unique, hilarious (to an outside observer) ways of suffering.
    - IggleSniggle 3y ago
      It's super common to have both. It develops naturally from understanding how ADD affects you and stressing about what you might be forgetting or overlooking or whatever now. They can feed on each other. It's easy to imagine how ADD symptoms could develop from GAD. I was born with ADD, but developed GAD in my 30s in response to living with ADD.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

For me, those are two different modes of thinking. As in: Mode 1: I've accepted that chores are something I have to do. I have "system 2" reasons to be doing them, such as "keeps me in good standing with my spouse", "makes home stay pleasant to be in, as opposed to a biological hazard", or "not doing them will later make me question my status as an adult human being". Those are all "system 2" things though, meaning they provide approximately zero motivation at the moment when I'm attempting, or considering, to do a chore. What works here is, using "system 2" motivation to refine my TODO list - an activity that is self-rewarding by giving me that "oh I am very smart" feeling. And then, when it's time to do something, having checkboxes to tick provide some immediate reward I can parse "in the moment". Not much, but better than the default, which is no reward at all. Mode 2: All this is modern recreation of the Sisyphus story. Chores are a waste of life. It's one of the biggest tragedies of humanity that we haven't yet automated away or designed away the need for maintenance work. Developing self-cleaning, self-maintaining technologies and solutions sounds like a line of work I'd like to be in. -- The important bit of personal growth for me was to put a force field between those two modes of thinking, so that I can still process thoughts related to Mode 2, without having them interfering with my ability to do anything.

klyrs 3y ago

For me, for chores specifically, that sense of motivation comes from a lifetime of past failures. I walked away from a kitchen full of dishes when I moved out of my first apartment, face red in shame, and the landlord ate my deposit. Other friends of mine have had infestations, because their food messes didn't make it back to the kitchen. I saw their cleaning/extermination bills. There is a distinct fear "if I don't manage to break this down into bite-sized pieces, I will suffer XYZ embarrassing/costly consequence" which truly motivates me. And now with a child, "if I don't manage to instil this habit into this child without making it palatable and manageable..." There are other consequences too -- in-laws induce shame. Other visitors induce shame, but if I have them every other week, the panic-clean before the arrival of in-laws is only slightly bigger than the routine-clean. And with 2 adults and a child with ADHD, messes build fast if we don't stay on top of it. So when I say ticking the box is it's own reward... really it's the "I'm keeping the monster at bay with the stroke of a pen at the end of 10 minutes of drudgery."

yadingus 3y ago

If you're already doing those tasks over and over there is no point in adding them to a todo. When I started using a todo list I was very conceptual about it "this is something that must be done, therefore it goes on the list. But really it's more about which tasks need to be present on a list. I don't need to be reminded to eat every day, and if I do, that's the job of an alarm. On the other hand if I need to soak lentils while I make breakfast tomorrow, that might go in my todo list.

damascus 3y ago

I took a queue from Seth Godin in his book 'This is Marketing' where he basically breaks it down to: People like me do things like this. I adopted a certain baseline of living as part of my core identity. People like me keep the house clean always, and tidy mostly. People like me remove anything with an odor immediately (50% full trash but it smells? gotta go right now.) Couple that with the 2 minute rule "if it takes less than 2 minutes do it right now" and it's really changed how I live.