Todo List Forkbombing

My todo list is something of a forkbomb. I 'll start out doing something, find it's interesting, add related things and iterate. I think Allie Brosch best encapsulated it in her blog where she decides to "clean ALL the things". I find myself wanting to read ALL the things; code ALL the things; visit ALL the places; learn ALL the things; try eating ALL the things; try cooking ALL the things; taste ALL the wines; paint ALL the things; lose ALL the weight; save ALL the money; teach the kids ALL the things; watch ALL the movies; write ALL the things; brew ALL the things; run ALL the races; record ALL the data; ad infinitum. At the wise old age of 16 I started my todo list. Initially it consisted of a few books that my history teacher recommended that I didn't have time to read right then. It soon expanded to include goals like climbing Devil's Tower, learning to play the piano, etc. I remember those two pretty well because they're still on the list nearly two decades later. Almost immediately the growth rate of the list surpassed my ability to cross things off of it. So while my life may appear to be one of accomplishment, from my perspective there's always the other side - the remaining list of things I haven't accomplished yet. And that list always seems to be larger. My latest expansion has been into the world of MOOCs. That "M" is for massive, which didn't take long for their contribution to my list to be. I started off with a computational investing class offered by alma mater, GA Tech. There were lectures to watch, homeworks to do, quizzes to take, and suggested readings - a number of books and articles. This was so much fun I've since signed up for several more - programming languages, algorithms and the microbiome. Each comes with it's own swath of readings, videos, assignments, related books, experiments, etc. So I find myself now carrying around a dozen or so "schoolbooks" I'm currently reading in addition to the ones I'm reading to skill up at work. I've even sampled my own gut microbiota for sequencing (results in a later blog). Fortunately, six years ago during my first week living in Nebraska (in a tent - pioneer style), I came across Randy Pausch's last lecture and improved my list by ranking tasks by priority. I have so far resisted the urge to break this out beyond 5 rankings, 1 being the rarely used super important drop everything and do it now ranking to 5 being the it might happen someday. So when I go on a listing binge, planning to do ALL the things, I can come back when the shear insanity of becomes apparent and reprioritize. Because that fifth book on the algorithms class's recommendations probably doesn't need to be read before I finish the project for work later this week. I fact I may never get to it. And that's okay.