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Why To-Do Lists Are Ruining Your Workflow ✅

2024-07-04 · Short · Ali · recording, 0:46 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Lesson from a book

In a Short, Ali says to-do lists are infinite, so high performers keep adding to them; with Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks he holds that there is too much to do and sacrifices are needed, which he makes with his energy investment portfolio: a long bucket list and a short list of three to five active things.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Infinite to-do lists, Four Thousand Weeks and the energy investment portfolio; the lockdown mistake

  • ★★ Ali says one issue with to-do lists is that they are infinite, so people who want to be high performers keep adding things to them and try to juggle everything. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali loves Oliver Burkeman's philosophy from Four Thousand Weeks: there is simply too much to do and never enough time for all of it, so you have to make some sacrifices. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali makes those sacrifices with what he calls the energy investment portfolio: a long bucket list of things he would like to do and a very short list of the three to five things he is investing energy in right now. — 00:00:00 · energy investment portfolio
  • ★★ During lockdown, Ali says, he made the mistake of thinking he had so much time that he would take guitar, singing, piano and art lessons and learn some Japanese on the side, doing too much at once. — 00:00:29

Threads in this video

  • refine · Should you run your work from a to-do list? — Ali makes those sacrifices with what he calls the energy investment portfolio: a long bucket list of things he would like to do and a very short list of the three to five things he is investing energy in right now. (00:00:00)
  • refine · How many projects should you work on at once? — During lockdown, Ali says, he made the mistake of thinking he had so much time that he would take guitar, singing, piano and art lessons and learn some Japanese on the side, doing too much at once. (00:00:29)

Mentioned

Central: energy investment portfolio

Also: Four Thousand Weeks · Oliver Burkeman

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