Ever find yourself in a situation where you’re in the weeds? You’re overwhelmed by having too much to do, so you feel a sense of despair at not being able to catch up. You live in the uncomfortable chaos instead.
"Ever find yourself in a situation where you’re in the weeds? You’re overwhelmed by having too much to do, so you feel a sense of despair at not being able to catch up."
I am in this situation now and have been since 2019. Personal issues and a lack of regular employment have kept me in this space. I had hoped being able to sell subscriptions on Substack while publishing my work would relieve my financial issues, but I have not been able to sell enough of them for either of my pages to be a "bestseller" and for me to get noticed and promoted that way.
David, I feel this! You're very active on the platform, but sometimes it feels like talking to a wall, or into a void.
Feel free to share how you've thought about organizing your projects here. I'm down to at least listen - maybe reflecting on your workflow can give you the opportunity to examine what you're doing from a fresh perspective. Either way, happy to listen.
Interesting how I am reading this at the end of May, weeks after you posted it, as I am trying to catch up on my favorite Substack authors… Substack is a place of abundance, and it is easy to become overwhelmed. (Especially when life and external deadlines cause me to fall behind on the reading I want to do within the ‘Stack.)
Collecting knowledge and facts used to be one of those truly useful skills, but I think that wisdom-collectors are going to be the thing going forward.
In the 90s, a popular job screening activity was the ‘inbox exercise.’ You gave a candidate a stack of papers simulating what they might find in their inbox or really ‘in tray’ to gauge how they would triage and manage their daily workload. There was typically an outbox or tray underneath the inbox that an interoffice mail person would pick up later in the day. Zero inbox evolved as the heroic way to manage your email inbox
It's easy to see how the office analogs became their digital descendants. I never ended up working in a corporate office, but I have figured out corporate workflows and tricks of the trade anyway. A lot of independent business literature just borrowed ideas that were developed in the corporate world first, so small business owners were just ad-hocing their systems together with duct tape.
Anyway, the paper stuff laid the foundation for email archiving, folders, and all that good stuff I used to use a lot more. Nowadays, search has obviated many of my folders, but the workflow and triage idea still persists for me.
Yet I think, perphaps, triage is a lot harder today. That in-tray seems quaint now with its stack of papers that was static most of the day. Search doesn't make up for it
I was going to bring up the "Paradox of Choice" before you did.
Actually, the "Buridan's Ass" thought experiment harkens to this concept, too - the inability to pick between two seemingly equally important options makes you indirectly opt for none of them.
But it's interesting to see how this craving for simpler choices gets utilized in UX circles and digital marketing. It's quite common for SaaS companies to present pricing plans as a simplified three-tier structure with a clearly advantageous "middle tier" that appears like the no-brainer choice. It can also be a way to nudge people into spending more money on a higher plan instead of analyzing what they need at length, simply because the cognitive load involved doesn't appear to be worth the effort.
Oh yes. I fully recognize that I am susceptible to this sort of built-in marketing. I also view it as worth the price, since all that heavy cognitive lifting is just wiped away and there's no negotiating or overthinking. Of course, you pay a lot more for things on average this way, but then again, you get a lot of time back.
This is a interesting way of looking at things Andrew. I must admit that I never got to see this video. At that time I was about 13yrs, which meant that I was two years into having Epilepsy and was struggling with that HUGE life change. Speaking of channels if representing the channels of life though, at that time I had very few. I did not speak of it much but the fear of losing my life each night was much greater than anything else. Due to my being in Choir and in musicals later I did have some unique channels but most certainly not more. Sadly, some would see that way as having more but they most certainly did not see the hard things I struggled with that were only additions to what every kid struggles with growing up. The world is so crazy with technology today that there are about a thousand channels. To ME, life went from having almost NO channels to having at least some. At the moment, all of my channels are not working correctly but at least they are there! When I was 13yrs, they weren't and noone ever imagined that they would be. The way I viewed it at the time was everyone else had a "normal" TV. set and mine was broken. The way I see it today is... the only channels of life that I would be interested in are the ones that bring joy to my life. Big, small, followed by a HUGE amount of society or not doesn't matter because life is just to short. I've missed way to much of the movie that is life already. Anyway, interesting topic.
"Ever find yourself in a situation where you’re in the weeds? You’re overwhelmed by having too much to do, so you feel a sense of despair at not being able to catch up."
I am in this situation now and have been since 2019. Personal issues and a lack of regular employment have kept me in this space. I had hoped being able to sell subscriptions on Substack while publishing my work would relieve my financial issues, but I have not been able to sell enough of them for either of my pages to be a "bestseller" and for me to get noticed and promoted that way.
David, I feel this! You're very active on the platform, but sometimes it feels like talking to a wall, or into a void.
Feel free to share how you've thought about organizing your projects here. I'm down to at least listen - maybe reflecting on your workflow can give you the opportunity to examine what you're doing from a fresh perspective. Either way, happy to listen.
Thank you.
Interesting how I am reading this at the end of May, weeks after you posted it, as I am trying to catch up on my favorite Substack authors… Substack is a place of abundance, and it is easy to become overwhelmed. (Especially when life and external deadlines cause me to fall behind on the reading I want to do within the ‘Stack.)
Collecting knowledge and facts used to be one of those truly useful skills, but I think that wisdom-collectors are going to be the thing going forward.
Abundance, it seems, is a double-edged sword!
I love to describe the neighbor’s ditsy dog Daisy(a golden retriever) as having 57 neurons and nothing on. Nobody seems to get that reference.
Golden retrievers are so goofy! They're so sweet, though.
In the 90s, a popular job screening activity was the ‘inbox exercise.’ You gave a candidate a stack of papers simulating what they might find in their inbox or really ‘in tray’ to gauge how they would triage and manage their daily workload. There was typically an outbox or tray underneath the inbox that an interoffice mail person would pick up later in the day. Zero inbox evolved as the heroic way to manage your email inbox
It's easy to see how the office analogs became their digital descendants. I never ended up working in a corporate office, but I have figured out corporate workflows and tricks of the trade anyway. A lot of independent business literature just borrowed ideas that were developed in the corporate world first, so small business owners were just ad-hocing their systems together with duct tape.
Anyway, the paper stuff laid the foundation for email archiving, folders, and all that good stuff I used to use a lot more. Nowadays, search has obviated many of my folders, but the workflow and triage idea still persists for me.
Yet I think, perphaps, triage is a lot harder today. That in-tray seems quaint now with its stack of papers that was static most of the day. Search doesn't make up for it
We have a firehose of info we see all at once these days. I agree - triage is way harder.
I was going to bring up the "Paradox of Choice" before you did.
Actually, the "Buridan's Ass" thought experiment harkens to this concept, too - the inability to pick between two seemingly equally important options makes you indirectly opt for none of them.
But it's interesting to see how this craving for simpler choices gets utilized in UX circles and digital marketing. It's quite common for SaaS companies to present pricing plans as a simplified three-tier structure with a clearly advantageous "middle tier" that appears like the no-brainer choice. It can also be a way to nudge people into spending more money on a higher plan instead of analyzing what they need at length, simply because the cognitive load involved doesn't appear to be worth the effort.
Oh yes. I fully recognize that I am susceptible to this sort of built-in marketing. I also view it as worth the price, since all that heavy cognitive lifting is just wiped away and there's no negotiating or overthinking. Of course, you pay a lot more for things on average this way, but then again, you get a lot of time back.
This is a interesting way of looking at things Andrew. I must admit that I never got to see this video. At that time I was about 13yrs, which meant that I was two years into having Epilepsy and was struggling with that HUGE life change. Speaking of channels if representing the channels of life though, at that time I had very few. I did not speak of it much but the fear of losing my life each night was much greater than anything else. Due to my being in Choir and in musicals later I did have some unique channels but most certainly not more. Sadly, some would see that way as having more but they most certainly did not see the hard things I struggled with that were only additions to what every kid struggles with growing up. The world is so crazy with technology today that there are about a thousand channels. To ME, life went from having almost NO channels to having at least some. At the moment, all of my channels are not working correctly but at least they are there! When I was 13yrs, they weren't and noone ever imagined that they would be. The way I viewed it at the time was everyone else had a "normal" TV. set and mine was broken. The way I see it today is... the only channels of life that I would be interested in are the ones that bring joy to my life. Big, small, followed by a HUGE amount of society or not doesn't matter because life is just to short. I've missed way to much of the movie that is life already. Anyway, interesting topic.