STEAL THIS IDEA: Zombie Mode Task List!

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.

Simple Time Management, Bulletjournal.com

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.