Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking

STEAL THIS IDEA: Zombie Mode Task List!

PETERMBALL Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking, Writing Advice - Craft & Process

I’m a big fan of running playbooks to take decision making off the table, especially on low energy days when I don’t have the spoons for self-management. There’s a larger piece in the works on this—part of a series that’s been going through my newsletter of late—but it remains a work-in-progress because there’s a bunch of moving pieces I’m trying to lay out and it’s hard to fit it into self-contained, 1,000 word chunks.

Imagine my jealousy when a Software Engineer named Lisa wrote about their “Zombie Mode” list over on the Bullet Journal blog.

“Zombie Mode” is what I call the state of being when I do not want to think and just want to be told what to do next. I have two collections to use when I am in this state — one for workdays and one for non-workdays. They both contain lists of tasks to be completed for the day, in order, until I snap out of Zombie Mode or the day ends.

Before, when I was in Zombie Mode, I would just waste all that time playing on my phone or trying to motivate myself to choose something to work on. Once I gave myself a list of things I could focus my attention on without having to make any decisions, my time in Zombie Mode went from completely wasted to productive. Even though I am only getting routine and brainless tasks done during that time, it is a vast improvement over getting nothing done at all.

My interest in playbooks started with something similar to this. I have a serious sleep disorder, so there’s a lot of days when I start off brain-fried and over-tired. Writing is damn near impossible on those mornings, and deep concentration is a mountain I often can’t climb, so I laid out a series of step-by-step activities I could follow that would steer me away from common, not-terribly-useful coping mechanism (computer games, binge-watching TV) and towards tasks I could actually do (layout and design; updating websites).

Over time, they’ve developed a little—my core playbooks are less “zombie mode” and more a trilogy that covers being overtired, over-anxious, or working-around-short-term-stressors—but I’m gradually building more and refining those that exist.

For example, over the weekend I added “straighten desk” to my three core lists, bedding in a habit of making the primary work space more pleasant to be around rather than defaulting to the couch. Another recent addition: play something from the “banger start to the morning” playlist, after a recent run of starting my mornings with the Kaiser Chiefs’ I Predict A Riot sent me into the workday with more enthusiasm than normal.

Why We’re Primed For Anger Right Now

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I’m a lot angrier than I used to be since the start of the pandemic, and I suspect I’m not alone.

There are nine potential triggers for anger most people experience, and the one that inevitably catches us off-guard is being stopped. We are hard-wired to respond to any subversion of our forward progress by an outside party with an adrenaline dump and stress hormones.

This makes perfect sense when our primitive answers feared being immobilised by a bigger, stronger predator, but those same instincts now fire up when faced with a slow-moving queue, call-waiting muzak, or the moment the expected delivery time changes on our Uber Eats order.

It’s also triggered by systemic cultural oppression, by circumstances where we want things to change but can’t see a way out, and the denial of opportunities we’re convinced should be ours.

We’re living in an era full of anger right now. The pandemic thwarts our forward momentum in real and immediate ways, from lockdowns to thwarted plans to the general helplessness in the face of a large and overwhelming problem. Anger is less of a surge, and more a constant companion.

We’re wired to respond to the physiological triggers behind emotions in a ninety-second burst, after which our thoughts take over and we can either nurse the feeling or move on. Which leaves us with two modes of reaction to the surge of anger: reactive, and proactive.

Reactive approaches see you stuff the feeling down, nursing it as a form of icy rage, or seeking the release of an explosive outburst of verbal or physical rage.

The pro-active approach is holding on to your boundaries, acknowledging the rage is there and letting it go. It’s about reframing what you’re feeling and what it means, finding alternative ways to move forward, and disrupting the tendency to stew through tools like exercise, humour, focused breathing, and mindfulness.

Those initial ninety seconds of anger are instinctual, something you can’t avoid. Your nervous system is hard-wired for it, warning you there’s a potential problem that you need to address.

But it’s also an invitation: how will you respond once the ninety seconds are over? Will you slip into the easy, reactive follow-through or find a pro-active way out of the being halted in place? Will you stew or find an alternate route?

Some recommended reading if you’ve noticed a growing trend towards anger or irritability in recent months: Unfuck Your Anger: Using Science To Understand Your Frustration, Rage, and Forgiveness, by Dr Faith Harper.

Downgrading Instead Of Replacing

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Me, three weeks ago: “Time to replace my phone. The battery isn’t quite enough to get through a busy day without charging, and everything’s running slow.” I resented the expense, and the time required to switch everything over, but it felt like a necessary upgrade.

Then I went through and cleaned off apps I didn’t want to transfer to a new phone. It cleared off half the screen. I followed it up by going minimalist on other apps as well. I went through them, one by one, and queried whether I was getting any value out of having them on my phone. The results were surprising:

  • No more mail app (I don’t answer emails on the phone, only read and ignore them);
  • No more IMDB (I only ever look things up on my couch, and the computer is right there);
  • No more YouTube (often used for streaming music during the day, and easily replaced by less distracting alternatives)
  • No more Chrome app (I still have a browser, but not one that remembers my bookmarks and search history, giving me a work-around way of accessing social media like Twitter and Facebook)
  • No more Instagram (I schedule and post images from Facebook’s business manager, mostly).
  • No more RSS reader (I never remember to check it on the phone, only on the desktop).

The short list of things that survive the cut: ereader apps; messaging services used by my closest friends; check-in apps for COVID tracking; the handful of apps I used to run Brain Jar Press and the long-form aspects of my web presence; a handful of apps for tracking eating and health.

The sole new app added: a music app for streaming tracks without playing videos, so I didn’t backslide and download YouTube again.

The phone became a useful tool, rather than a place to waste time, and the battery rarely dips below 60% now. No need to replace it unless I backslide and load all the deleted apps again, but in three weeks I’ve lived without everything and gradually weaned myself off constant checking.

I’ve never resented my phone less.

And if I do want to waste time on my phone, there’s still a backlist of ebooks and comics that need to be read. Which hardly feels like wasting time at all, compared to the other options.