Last week, I woke up entirely overwhelmed about my writing to-do list and decided to follow my latest productivity weapon: Fighting Ridiculousness with Some Ridiculousness of My Own .
It’s something I’ve gravitated to before, but abandoned in the name of ‘setting achievable, measurable goals’ like many sources tell us to do. As we should. Sometimes.
Results? Half of the tasks on my list did not get done (but half of them did, which is kind-of amazing). But with every task on my list, most of which were writing, marketing, or designing problems to solve, I was definitely able to get farther than I thought I would in 40 minutes.
So I had nothing to lose to be ridiculous!
My brain was also genuinely tired at the end of the day, from working with so much focus.
My conclusion is, the genius of a ridiculous approach is that most things expand to fill the space. If you don’t limit them, even if you have to do so ridiculously, any one of them is happy to take over your schedule.
Besides, until you try, how do you know you can’t get it done super fast rather than methodically slow?
I guess it does assume a certain comfort and bemusement about failing. Which I’ve got. 🙂 Well, usually. If you’re not okay with failing, this could conceivably drive you mad.
It reminds me of something I think my grandfather said, which is supposedly an anonymous Scottish proverb: “Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it.”
You know what this wouldn’t work for? Harvesting crops. Weight loss. Caramelizing onions.
I guess RIDICULOUSNESS isn’t so much an over-arching life philosophy one places over the microwave to reign over one’s existence, as it is a useful tool for oppressive to-do lists.
The Productive Author 