[Weekly WRAP] Why To-Do Lists Fail & Creative Challenges

Published over 3 years ago • 2 min read

Hey Reader,

Welcome back to the weekly wrap! If this is your first time reading, you're in good company with 45 other new subscribers. Thanks for being a part of our little corner of the internet 😄 Share the 3 Keys to Productivity with a friend.

Read of the Week 📖
Hundreds of Ways to Get S#!+ Done—and We Still Don’t

This article in Wired Magazine is one of the best I've come across about why to-do lists so often fail us. Clive Thompson dives into the mental and social reasons productivity apps are problematic - almost always leaving us feeling worse than before. The story is also wonderfully written, filled with lines like:

Apps, lists, and calendars can help us put our priorities in order, sure. But only we can figure out what those goals are. And setting limits on what we hope to do is philosophically painful.
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Every to-do list is a midlife crisis of unfulfilled promise. Winnowing away things you’ll never do in a weekly review is crucial, yet we dread it for what it says about the boundaries of existence. Our fragile psyches find it easier to build up a list of shame, freak out, and flee.

New Videos: Ship30 Review & Studio Setup

As a participant in the YouTube10 Challenge I published two new videos on my channel this week! I shared my experience writing online with the Ship 30 for 30 community AND how I setup a second "studio" in 10 minutes.

We just finished week one of the challenge and it's really cool to see people publishing their first ever YouTube videos! One member sent this message:

I've joined YouTube courses in the past but they were so overwhelming and complicated I never actually published a video. This challenge cuts through the clutter for new YouTubers so I know exactly what to do to publish videos. Even better, it helped me get over the perfectionism of "this video has to be perfect" - I know through quantity comes quality.

If you want to join us and catch up on the last week, there's still time! 4 weeks is enough time to build a habit (and the confidence) of publishing videos. Normally I would cut off registrations by now, but idk if I'll host another challenge before the end of the year. Click to join the YouTube10 Challenge!

Quantity leads to quality

That reminds me of my favorite creator parable. It is the story of a ceramics professor who told half the class they were being graded on total weight of pieces and the other half of the class on the quality of their best piece. Here's what happened at final grades:

The works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

The story has a creative angle to it, but the lesson applies to many areas of work and life. Showing up and giving your best effort at the moment instead of stressing about if it's your best effort of all time. One is a mindset, the other is a rarely-achieved-and-oft-worried-about measuring stick.

WRAP Up

Next week look for two more new videos on my channel, one about productivity and fear, the other about my experience with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Thanks for reading the weekly wrap and I’ll see you next week!

Matt

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