# On executive dysfunction and what lies beyond the dunes I wish I had the perfect todo app. One where I would think anything and it would appear in my calendar at exactly the perfect time to get that done and a couple of reminders at exactly the perfect moment to get me in the zone for what I have to do. I can picture a version of me that flows between all the tasks I have to do and completes them one by one. It’s what I think I want. The reality is that this would not help in any meaningful way, and when unobtanium doesn’t help there are much bigger issues that you have to deal with upstream. I feel like this is an almost universal human experience. You know you have to send a single email that takes maybe five minutes of your time but it’s almost impossible to get you to sit down and do it. There are always more pressing issues and there’s a dread you feel when thinking of actually doing the task. ![[7227760e-56e6-4e60-95e9-a693cd3bda4f.png]] Lately I have been thinking of when, fresh into my teenage years I was spending the summer in Senegal’s olympic pool. Going up the ladder with my cousin to look at him jump from far too high for me and spending some seconds there on the diving board, dreading the embarrassment of going back down the ladder. This time he pushed me in the pool, so I dived. I alone would have never jumped but there I was. The way down felt way too short and I felt like I wasted all the time I spent looking at the people diving rather than doing it myself. I often think of this when I have a simple task I cannot bring myself to do. _By the way, I never told my cousin how much his little prank impacted me during the years but that’s the way life is._ ![[b8336a72-e948-4407-aba4-987d4fc3123e.png]] You just have to push and jump. The rest will come. There is no mountain beyond the dune. ![[050deef8-dc83-48b0-a9c1-01510b3c9a3a.png]] # A little addendum There is value in doing things. I've found that a bad plan is almost always better than the great plan simply because the latter is often hard to visualize in the abstract and hard to get right, so much so that people get stuck on it indefinitely. What's wrong about being stuck in life is that the nature of it and the nature of time makes it so that you are still aging, and everything around you is progressing. Take it one day at a time but do it, try to do the small thing that leads to a decision rather than planning the perfect way to do everything going forward. Failing quick is often better than waiting, and succeeding in part is definitely better than not doing anything at all. How many of your peers are stuck in University because the condition are never ***quite*** right? One course at a time, one afternoon of study after another things will start to snowball. > And what he saw was a time nexus within this cave, > a boiling of possibilities focused here, wherein the most minute action > --the wink of an eye, a careless word, a misplaced grain of sand-- > moved a gigantic lever across the known universe. > He saw violence with the outcome subject to so many variables that his slightest movement created vast shiftings in the pattern. > ==The vision made him want to freeze into immobility, but this, too, was action with its consequences.== > --Dune