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Schrödinger's
To-Do List

Schrödinger's
To-Do List

Everything is done and undone simultaneously.

your to-do list observes you more than you observe it.

The Paradox Box

Your life is ruled by objects you can’t see.

Tasks, ideas, intentions—little quantum gremlins that exist in a state of
importance / irrelevance,
urgent / “meh,”
I’ll do it now / I’ll do it when the sun dies—

all simultaneously.

A to-do list isn’t a list.
It’s a wave function your brain is too tired to collapse.

Your tasks don’t sit patiently like polite citizens waiting to be checked off.
They blur, multiply, shapeshift, and form terrifying probability clouds over your laptop.

And until you observe one—really observe it—
it remains both:

  • • critical
  • • and basically done

Because your brain uses the same internal filing system as Schrödinger’s cat:
“If I don’t look at it, the problem technically doesn’t exist.”

“The human mind is a quantum device pretending to be a productivity tool.”

The Quantum Brain Problem

Your brain doesn’t store tasks.
It stores possibilities.

A task isn’t “Send email.”
It’s 93 alternate timelines of how that email could ruin your life.

A task isn’t “Start gym routine.”
It’s “choose shoes, choose playlist, choose identity, choose whether today is the day I better my life or embrace entropy.”

This is why simple tasks grow tentacles.

The ADHD brain interprets even the tiniest action as a branching universe of emotional, energetic, and existential implications.
So your executive function sits there blinking like a crashed program:

LOADING… Calibrating… forever.

The problem isn’t laziness.
You’re not avoiding tasks.
You’re avoiding the infinite outcomes attached to them.

Your brain is running quantum simulations while your body is lying on the floor eating cheese.

Your mind tries to act like a scientist.
Investigate task.
Classify task.
Begin task.

But just like actual scientists, you end up lost in the calibration phase.
Analysing instead of initiating.
Preparing instead of beginning.
Hyperfocusing on irrelevant corners of the universe instead of doing the thing.

And then the UI appears—
not as decoration,
but as diagnosis.

Executive Function
LOADING
Calibrating... forever.
Motivation.exeNot Responding
Current State:
PRODUCTIVE

You’re not behind on life.
You’re booting.

You’re not unmotivated.
You’re buffering.

You’re not procrastinating.
You’re running a high-complexity simulation on hardware built for eating berries in the forest.

Tasks in Superposition

Your to-do list lives in a shimmering cloud of maybes.
Every item is both:

  • — already finished
  • — and aggressively untouched

because the brain gets dopamine from imagining doing the task
instead of doing the task.

This is why planning can feel productive:
your brain interprets it as progress.

But hover over a task—really notice it—
and the wave function vibrates.
Observe it just a little harder…
and the entire list starts screaming for attention like toddlers in a supermarket.

Unobserved Task State
Unobserved Task State
Unobserved Task State
Unobserved Task State
“observation increases procrastination. physics regrets to inform you.”

Observation = Collapse

Here’s the uncomfortable part:

The moment you decide to “actually do” a task,
it stops being fun.

This is the quantum collapse.

The imagined version of you—
the disciplined 5am monk-warrior-writer-athlete-mogul—
exists in perfect superposition.

He is flawless precisely because you haven’t observed him yet.

The real you, however, wakes up at 11:42am
with one sock on
and cheese crumbs in your hair.

Your to-do list collapses your fantasy self into your actual self.

That hurts.

And the UI reflects that collapse:
two universes side-by-side—
the one you perform in your mind,
and the one gravity drags you back into.

The Imagined Self

5:00 AM

Wake up, meditate, run 10k, write novel.

Inbox Zero

Respond to every email with grace and wit.

The Observed Reality

11:42 AM

Wake up, panic, scroll twitter, eat cheese.

Inbox 4,291

Mark all as read. Close tab.

You’re not inconsistent.
You’re quantum-sensitive.

Your imagined self requires zero energy.
Your real self runs on battery saver mode.

"You are simultaneously overwhelmed and underwhelmed by your own life."

Uncertainty as a Lifestyle

This is the part everyone gets wrong:

Your problem is not productivity.
Your problem is probabilistic existence.

Tasks feel impossible until they feel inevitable.
You do nothing for two weeks, then everything in two hours.
You hyperfixate until your organs fail, then avoid the same task for months.
You oscillate between omnipotence and “I physically cannot stand up.”

You’re not broken.
You’re nonlinear.

You don’t check off tasks one-by-one.
You collapse clusters of possibilities whenever your internal physics engine allows.

Your to-do list isn’t a plan.
It’s a dynamic probability field your nervous system is constantly renegotiating.

The box is always both open and closed.

The tasks are always both done and undone.

You are always both capable and confused.

And that’s fine.

Because certainty is for machines.
You are beautifully, chaotically human.

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