I have been on the quest for winning at life for a long time. But nothing could prepare me for a run-in with a lesswrongian.
My life has been turned upside-down, it turns out that every aspect of my life can be considerably improved or upgraded, but there is so much to do that I'm completely overwhelmed by all there is to do.
The improvement to-do list is a mile long and I've currently reached the point where I'd rather wallow in self-pity than actually get up and do something...
I have trouble sleeping because I worry about all the things I'm not doing, and then when I'm awake I'm stuck on sites like lesswrong pressing F5 all day long in the hopes that a new post will save me...
Help,Please.
I'm a big fan of the GTD system for doing that.
Roughly, it can be summarized as a system that lets you forget everything that you're trying to do long enough to actually do any of it.
It tries to make it easier for you to think by freeing up the mental threads that you have running that try to remember what you want to do. Having your brain keep track of lots of things for you saps energy and motivation, but external sources don't nearly as much. Rather than feeling like you have a million and one things to do, it gives you your things one at a time, while ensuring that everything you put through it actually happens. In theory.
I personally use some software to manage the lists, but basically what you do is...
Collect: You put everything you want to do through one system. When something pops up, all you have to do is put it in your inbox. When you trust this system, you feel safe that once something goes in you'll act appropriately, and the thread dedicated to making you actually do the thing is sated.
Process: You go through your inbox and decide what to do. Figure out a next concrete step to do for every item in your inbox. Having a concrete step lowers the trivial inconvenience to doing something since you have less thinking to do at the beginning of a task, and lets you step in and start something when you feel like working on it.
Then, if its actionable and not dependent on anything else, you either do it now if it takes less than 2 minutes, or schedule a time to do if it doesn't. Your software should let you schedule things, and automatically give it back to you when it comes to the scheduled time. If you're waiting on something, mark down the thing you're waiting on and come back to it after that. Different programs do this to different degrees -- what I've been doing so far is just putting everything that's waiting on something in my next box, and checking it regularly. If you don't actually want to do it, throw it out. Do this relentlessly with things that aren't necessary, and save yourself the headache.
Organize: Put everything into a system that lets you access what you need when you actually need it. I have a Today, Next, Scheduled, and Someday list. Everything in the Today list is stuff I intend to do today. Everything in Next is stuff that I want to do in the near future, but not today. At the end of each day, I look at my next list and see if I want to move anything into my today list. The Scheduled list is everything that has a particular date that its going to come up again. My software handles moving them from scheduled to today on the day that I told it to when I process. The Someday list is things that I may want to do sometime, but have no plans to start.
Review: Periodically go through things to make sure that you're doing all of them. See if you want to move things from next to today. Make sure that the tasks for the project you wanted to work on are actually moving forward at the rate you expected them to. If not, see if you need to rearrange your schedule to give yourself more time for it.
Do: Actually do the stuff. Go to your today list and work your way through the things. If you're not working on it now, don't particularly worry about it.
I actually use GTD, it doesn't help the with the overwhelming fear though :(