Why Is It Hard to Let Go?
FleetingOn the the great things of gtd is that it teaches you to let go. More precisely, it teaches you how to realize you already let go of old todos and advises to make this clear in your trusted system. This process is done in the weekly review and stuff you feel might still be relevant at some point shall go in the maybe list.
Why is so? Is there a cognitive bias that prevent us from realizing the hard truth?
I think this has to do with cognitive dissonance:
- it could be that we are not as trustworthy as we thought we would be,
- or it could be that it makes us realize we are not as efficient as we thought we would be,
- or makes us think about the fact that the todo list is never empty (always refilled).
This could cause a cognitive dissonance. We generally diminish cognitive dissonance by rationalizing, most likely by changing our perception of the reality, preventing us to realize the facts.