Have you ever encountered a task that seemed simple at first but turned out to be endless once you dove in? This happens frequently in both work and life. "I want to get rid of some clothes," "Let me add a new feature," "I want to go on a trip." These seemingly simple requests or wishes often expand into unimaginable beasts.
After consuming more information about focus and thought organization, I've gradually clarified the importance of boundaries.
When you encounter something vague and unclear, you can establish boundaries to make things clear and even measurable. When you face a scenario that requires more divergent thinking, try to break boundaries to expand your thinking and connections.
"Rope" and "stick" are the two earliest tools used by humans. Rope can pull good things closer, and the stick can drive away bad things. These two are humanity's best friends, born from human hands. Where there are people, there are ropes and sticks.
— Kobo Abe's "The Rope" (quoted from Death Stranding)
Defining the Beginning and End of a Task
"I want to get rid of some clothes." It sounds like a simple wish, but how do you do it? How many should you discard? When should you do it? How do you handle the old clothes? Just wishing creates all kinds of big and small problems. Many people get a headache just thinking about it and then give up.
Establishing boundaries can help. For various work items filled with uncertainty, you can establish boundaries for the beginning and end.
- End: Specifically, after completing this task, what state will I (or the product) be in? In what state can I say this task is complete?
- Beginning: If I want to start this task, what is the first thing to do?
This is from Getting Things Done (GTD) — the first thing to do when analyzing work items.
With an end state, you have a clear imagination of the future state you'll be in, and based on this state, perhaps you don't need to do what you originally thought you'd do (like getting rid of clothes) — there might be other ways to achieve it.
And with a beginning, your brain becomes aware that this can be started now, rather than overthinking until it seems too difficult and ultimately giving up.
For the task "I want to get rid of clothes," I defined it this way:
- End: Don't feel a psychological burden when looking at the wardrobe, reduce the quantity, and select clothes that can be worn in multiple occasions
- Beginning: Define the clothes needed for several common occasions
Although the end state isn't yet crystal clear, it's enough to let me know which direction to move toward. And defining the beginning allows me to start acting now. With a beginning and an end, things look more achievable. If you discover you want to do more, there's no need to rush to complete it within this task scope — create a new work item and prevent the original goal from expanding infinitely.
For example, after getting rid of clothes, you might realize you need to buy some new clothes that can match multiple occasions — that can be another task. Don't let work goals keep inflating; shooting while walking makes it hard to aim and achieve. For instance, after getting rid of clothes, I created a new work item: buy several pairs of casual-looking cropped pants that also have the stretch and durability needed for rock climbing, so I can wear them in multiple settings to reduce choices.
Putting Hard-to-Estimate Work into Fixed-Sized Boxes
Do you remember what work items you did yesterday? Often during morning meetings, you need to answer this question. When working on a difficult task, even spending an entire day only pushes progress forward a little bit. When a progress report is needed, you might sheepishly say: "The XXX work I'm doing isn't finished yet," but actually, you tried many things.
Such progress reports usually struggle to show the progress of this work, but you actually tried many things — it's just that these attempts don't necessarily bring substantial advancement. For work that's hard to describe like this, you can put it into Pomodoro Technique fixed-sized boxes.
Each Pomodoro unit is 25 minutes (or fifty minutes, depending on how you adjust it). After finishing, briefly record the progress of those twenty-five minutes in a few sentences, then take a five-minute break.
With this standardized box, for work that's hard to estimate, no matter how difficult, you have a record every twenty-five minutes, and combining them creates the picture of your day. Results are important, but the process is equally important. When other team members learn your status from progress reports, they can not only understand that you're trying multiple different solutions but hitting walls — they can also give you advice to solve problems together based on what you've tried.
When you actually complete the work, you can also look back and see exactly how many Pomodoros you spent. When estimating work in the future (including both easily estimated and hard-to-estimate work), you'll also have a more concrete imagination of how much time you need to spend to complete it.
The Boundary of Ritual
Often we're chased by work, seeming to be exhaustingly busy every day at work, but not knowing what we're busy with. The boundaries created by rituals can also allow you to open and close each day with a more settled and stable mind within a controllable and regular boundary.
When working from home, my day usually starts with wiping the desk, then showering and making coffee. When I sit down at the computer desk, I've already made the state transition from life to work. This day-to-day regularity gives my mind and brain a signal, letting me know that the working day has begun. After fixing the shape of the day, this regularity can stabilize my mental and physical state.
And this leads to the theme of breaking boundaries.
The Width of Boundaries
When wiping the desk, showering, and making coffee, it seems like a ritual and boundary for switching to work, but just like the seemingly distinct coastline, when you zoom in closely, the boundary of the coastline is white spray, foam, and fine sand. This also means that boundaries don't immediately switch from one state to another after crossing.
Boundaries have width.
When wiping the desk, things from yesterday's work also vaguely appear in my mind. What did I do? Which tasks aren't finished yet? Are there any miscellaneous matters not yet dealt with? Was there anything interesting yesterday? A friend once said that the blankness during showering is like a radio in your brain — you don't know what music will play, but these various trivial matters will slowly play softly in your mind.
And in moments like this, you can break through the boundaries of your thinking.
"I suddenly realized that both Pomodoro Technique and GTD eliminate the uncertainty of work items through establishing boundaries!" Many times, these views that don't seem very related pop up at unexpected moments, rather than when you're racking your brain thinking hard.
This is also why leaving some blank space is important. Those times of showering, sitting alone on the balcony drinking coffee, and walking aren't wasted — they integrate cross-domain organizational thinking through passive thought flow. When you're diligently sprinting through a busy day, during rest time, why not temporarily stay away from social media, walk alone in the sunset, drink coffee, or talk with people? These moments that seem to have no work — your brain is still quietly working, providing nutrients for inspiration.
Boundaries have width, and when you're in the blank zone of boundaries, it can take you to break through the boundaries of different work or thoughts, integrating things from different fields, or thinking of solutions you've never considered before.
And the five-minute break in Pomodoro is the same. Many people feel annoyed when they're just getting into the flow and the twenty-five-minute reminder goes off. But these five minutes of rest won't be wasted (as long as you don't go on social media). When you get water or use the bathroom, your thoughts are actually still wandering, trying to catch those unclear little details in the air, leading you to the source of thinking. The results deduced by this subconscious divergent thinking often can't be thought of when you're concentrating on work.
After the five-minute break ends, you've stretched your body, gotten water, used the bathroom, and perhaps your brain has deduced new ideas, waiting for you to unfold them in the twenty-five-minute sprint.
Breaking Through Boundaries
For me, boundaries are a tool like rope, defining the scope of various things — between work and life, between people, etc. But when regular life internalizes everything, everything becomes taken for granted, and then it's not easy to generate new ideas.
So appropriately breaking boundaries is also important.
As mentioned earlier, leaving some blank space is one way to break thought boundaries. Also, leaving time for non-daily activities is very helpful, such as traveling. Travel is a great opportunity to pull yourself into a completely different context. These fresh things can stimulate you and change your originally fixed ideas.
For example, before going to Japan, I had never bathed outdoors. But after doing it for the first time, I discovered that doing something originally very private in a natural environment is very relaxing. Bathing itself can relax the body and mind, but bathing in nature raises relaxation to another level. And this very imaginatively connected me to the Attention Restoration Theory I had read before, which describes why being in a natural environment helps restore depleted attention — connecting outdoor bathing with attention restoration theory.
At the same time, I empathized with why exhibitionists want to do that and thought about the difference between outdoor bathing and exhibitionism. I think outdoor bathing is when the inn provides a safe environment that lets us do it with peace of mind, while exhibitionists heighten their stimulation through unsafety, and stimulation isn't what outdoor bathing pursues. Also, exhibitionists build their pleasure on others' fear, but outdoor bathing doesn't.
These interesting leaping thoughts are hard to break through in a regular daily routine, so getting thought stimulation from travel is also very important.
Talking with people is another way to break through boundaries. When others tell you information you don't know, it can always open your eyes, but when you express your thoughts, it's also a way to reorganize your own thinking. From the exchange of information between both parties and immediately reorganized thinking, new ideas can always be sparked.
This is also why casual chat is so important. Because casual chat itself has the quality of no clear purpose, which can instead better promote the exchange of various different ideas. This is also why the office pantry is important — because it's a hub for casual chat. When communication has a premise, thinking may not be able to proceed so freely. For example, video conferences almost always have a specific purpose before they can unfold, so the value they provide is very different from casual chat.
There's No Such Thing as Stable Boundaries
I've talked about many things related to boundaries above — threads I've gradually sorted out through various reading and conversations. I found that boundaries are everywhere in life, so being aware of the existence of boundaries has brought me many interesting ideas and changed my behavior through understanding the existence of boundaries.
Realizing that the rope metaphor in Death Stranding is a kind of boundary, the "The Line, the Borderline, and the Floating Boundary" exhibition previously shown at Chiayi Art Museum curated many artworks about boundaries, whether the transparent thoughts of the Trisolarans in The Three-Body Problem make it impossible for them to form different individuals through lying as a boundary, etc.
These thoughts both troubled and inspired me, so let me summarize here.
Finally, I want to say that there's no such thing as stable boundaries. The distance between people changes, and the Tropic of Cancer isn't forever on that line set by the monument. After understanding this principle, I realized that in the world, unless you reach the indivisible microscopic world, you can find what might be clear boundaries, but nothing else in the world has them. Even "seas dry up and rocks crumble" isn't forever — it depends on how you observe the dimension of time.
Pomodoro doesn't have to be twenty-five minutes. This boundary is just through limitation to make things measurable. The intimacy between people changes with events and deeper understanding. Everything is like the coastline — seemingly clear, but actually the coastline has its width, changing with waves and tides, just like human relationships advance and retreat like dancing a duet.
After recognizing this, when boundaries change, you won't be at a loss, and you can accept that what never changes is that everything changes.