Why do you plan instead of living your life ?
Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?
121–130 of 222 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?
#122In lieu of todo lists, schedules seem like they help me get things done better. To back up what people are saying here, I find making the schedule each morning is helpful, even if the schedule proceeds to go completely to shit throughout the day.
Also, I think it's hard to have goals. I prefer systems. Rather than have my primary driver be, "I want to work from someplace other than my home office 3 times each week" (I work from home), I say, "I work from places other than my office sometimes." and then work that into my schedule. That way I'm not checking a box so much as just "being" who I want to be. The externality of a goal is gone, and "Who I am" now incorporates "work from a place not in my home".
I dunno if any of this helps. It sometimes doesn't help me. It sometimes does, though.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?
#123Have you tried http://focuster.com?
It automates scheduling your to-do list in your Google Calendar so you're always working on your next top priority.
Don't finish it? It moves it forward in your calendar until you get it done so nothing falls through the cracks.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?
#124David Allen's getting things done hands down. You don't even need to read the book to implement it, although it's a great read. here's the 15-minute summary that will get you going right now - https://hamberg.no/gtd/ - I have used Trello to implement it - here's a screenshot. http://i.imgur.com/dbH8yGq.png specifically answering your question - this framework makes you regularly review your task list and ensures that…
The problem with GTD is that it explicitly discourages you to schedule tasks at a specific time unless strictly necessary : you're always supposed to do whatever is "next" in the "context" you're in. You're never done, and this can be taxing and make you want to give up. Newer research (Dan Ariely's IIRC) has shown that having tasks on the calendar improves the chances of actually doing a realistic number of them.
Schedule things that have to be or can be scheduled (meetings with others, classes, whatever), create projects with priorities and contexts for everything else. I "schedule" time to read each day, but it's not fixed to any specific reading, but rather a set of reading projects (presently cookbooks, soon math books mixed with programming books). But I have other things that I want/need to do that sometimes takes over that reading time (learning Spanish is higher priority).
GTD isn't dogma, pick the right approach for you, but it is a good toolset/approach for many things. It can be very flexible to fit your particular motivators and environment and constraints.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?
#125Why do you plan instead of living your life ?
Because the unexamined life is not worth living.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?
#126I use 3 lists: first for the "big picture" long term goals, the second is for weekly goals, and third are daily todo lists. For all my planning I use paper and colored pens/pencils.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?
#127At TINT we use https://takeaim.io and https://small-improvements-hrd.appspot.com
I like setting a schedule to review monthly/quarterly goals. Friday is always an alternate schedule for me, either hackday or story grooming/backlog work/paperwork etc. I review the goals, AND whether I have been even working on it, using https://takeaim.io data.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?
#128Every time I'm faced with a decision, I close my eyes and see the same picture. Whenever I consider an action, I ask myself, will this action help to make this picture a reality? Pull it out of my mind and into the world? And I only act if the answer is yes.
- Little Finger
Deliberately add your to-dos. Before adding a to-do (to asana / on paper) ask this question: Does this to-do get you closer to what you want to accomplish? If no, do not add it. If yes, prioritize first (no two to-dos are equal, choose the ones with the most impact) and then bucket it according to Eisenhower Decision Matrix.
As your morning routine, review your matrix to stay on track.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?
#129I developed a chrome extension, Hey Habit (bit.ly/heyHabit), to help me with this. I add my long term goals as projects and then set up reoccurring tasks to make them happen.
There's also a web version at heyhabit.com.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?
#130Beeminder. Everything from exercise to posture to meditation to work. It's one of the most clever pieces of software I've used, in terms of domain-ideas embedded in it.
Wow, thank you so much for the kind words! (I'm a Beeminder cofounder.) I'm actually also not sure what you mean about embedded domain-ideas, or I hadn't heard it put that way. Do you mean the domain idea being aligning daily to-dos with long-term goals by use of a commitment contract? And then our clever implementation is how we tie the commitment to datapoints on a graph? That's what we think is clever. But I'd love to hear your take on it (also I'm sure it would be more compelling from a user than a founder :)).