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Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?

#191

Post by sivanesanms »

I stopped relying on tools. Discipline is what it all takes.

Every year from Christmas I do a retrospective for all 52 weekends, my year goals, personal progress and professional progress. I try to find out where my money goes and my time as well. How Happy I was etc.

Make a year plan and print it and put it in your cube (in your home). Yes, please set up an office space in Home. It works.

Then make detailed plan for 52 weekends and weeks aligning to your yearly goals.

Now buy 1$ yearly calendar from dollarstore and fill it up. WHen I turn it each month I know what I should be doing this month. Also I align or change it with some buffer time.

Mostly I miss my deadlines, because my estimations are wrong or the new technology or programming language I am learning takes more time than I expected.

At the end I am happy that I am two steps ahead by planning compare to some one who has never planned.

Now if you ask about the results between a planner and non-planner, I don't know what to say.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?

#192

Post by samridh90 »

awjr wrote: post #108

I have a trello board with the following columns: "Good intentions" :- Things I think I'm going to do. I investigate then put in other columns. "Next Up" :- Need to have a go at next. "Working On" :- Actively doing. "Done/Dead" :- Things that I did as well as things I failed at or discarded. "Follow Up" :- Something happened, so need to wait on something/someone to then allow me to continue. "Asleep" :- Sometimes thi…

Is this roughly based on the David Allen's "Getting things done" method?

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?

#193

Post by omgdlight »

passivepinetree wrote: post #154
enoch_r wrote: post #151

I cannot possibly recommend Beeminder highly enough, if you happen to have the personality type that it works well with. The basic idea isn't too far off from the million other "habit" apps out there. I say I want to meditate X days a week, tell Beeminder whenever I meditate, Beeminder gives me a pretty (okay, decently attractive) graph of how I'm doing, and they tell me if I'm not meditating as much as I want to. Th…

Wait, do you pay the company Beeminder that money? Or is it paid into a savings account or something for you to have access to later? If you actually pay the company that money, and if their app is based around that pricing, that's a pretty unique business model idea.

Yeah the money goes to beeminder. I've paid several times but it's been worth it since I can make a credible commitment to myself to do something. And the enforcement is very forgiving - if you decide you don't want to do something you can let yourself quit in a week. Also every time I've had to talk to support (I forgot to put data in or there was some issue) they've been pleasant and refunded me completely.

At this point I know my limits fairly well and set goals I'll actually want to achieve. I still pay for the premium features, though, which let me use beeminder as a capable generalized scheduling and tracking system for irregular tasks (e.g. remind me if I haven't called my grandmother in three weeks).

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?

#194

Post by tedmiston »

taude wrote: post #159
LVB wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Plans are nothing; planning is everything." - Dwight D. Eisenhower I used to hear this a lot from one of my better bosses. I agree with it. It is, however, important to capture "planning". Any form is fine, whether scribbles or a list or a picture of a whiteboard. Trying to organize the raw info was usually a waste of time, but having it accessible as a reference wasn't.

I think there's value in relieving the mind from holding on to the context by writing it down, even if your intent of execution changes. The process of writing it down releases my mind from thinking about it.

What you said — writing it down to free your attention — is one of the main points from Getting Things Done.

They have a good lists of mind sweep / brain-dump triggers [1] that I think benefit everyone even without ever doing everything one writes down.

[1]: http://gettingthingsdone.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Mind...

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?

#195

Post by omgdlight »

malcolmocean wrote: post #183
poppingtonic wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also use Complice in a group setting, using rooms, if you think you might need accountability buddies.

Here's the Hacker News room, for instance: https://complice.co/room/hackers (Not a lot of people in it lately, but we could change that ;) )

hey not to derail a thread recommending your app (which I think is pretty nice! I drop into the lw coworking room sometimes), but I've never quite figured out how to take advantage of it, despite feeling like I should be the kind of person who can (I do daily intention / outcome logging, I have a premium beeminder sub, I do pomodoros and stuff like that). I've done the free trial a couple times but never managed to get it into my flow in a way that quite justified the cost.

Anyway this post isn't going to give you enough information to recommend anything highly specific, but do you have any ideas what I might have been missing?

Maybe I've just already got that kind of thing well enough sorted, but then, I'm not entirely satisfied with my current approach to self planning.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?

#196

Post by tedmiston »

enoch_r wrote: post #168
passivepinetree wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, do you pay the company Beeminder that money? Or is it paid into a savings account or something for you to have access to later? If you actually pay the company that money, and if their app is based around that pricing, that's a pretty unique business model idea.

Yep, I pay Beeminder when I fail! As I see it, it's a mutually beneficial arrangement: Beeminder gets an incentive to keep operating, and I get an incentive to do whatever it was I just dropped the ball on. Maybe I'd feel differently if Beeminder were a huge, super-profitable company, but they're a tiny niche product that is ridiculously valuable to me and I have no problem rewarding them for that.

The company making money when you fail a goal doesn't sound very mutually beneficial.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?

#197

Post by awjr »

samridh90 wrote: post #192
awjr wrote: post #108

I have a trello board with the following columns: "Good intentions" :- Things I think I'm going to do. I investigate then put in other columns. "Next Up" :- Need to have a go at next. "Working On" :- Actively doing. "Done/Dead" :- Things that I did as well as things I failed at or discarded. "Follow Up" :- Something happened, so need to wait on something/someone to then allow me to continue. "Asleep" :- Sometimes thi…

Is this roughly based on the David Allen's "Getting things done" method?

Sorry haven't read it. I just realised I can be out cycling or walking the dog, or even just commuting to work and come up with an idea, get really deep about it then move on with my life. The board gave me a place to put these ideas.

I also keep ambitions on there. So one of them is "Become a councillor". I don't plan to try and be a councillor until 2019, but it's nice to see it on there. ;)

I'm guessing the board is about dreams, ambitions, and even the odd big task.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?

#198

Post by tedmiston »

iamnothere wrote: post #109

I use Panda Planner, a physical notebook designed to help you with monthly, weekly, and daily prioritization. I have found that the process of physically writing down and tracking goals each day forces me to sort through my mental clutter and decide what is important. For me, this priority-setting process is really a separate domain than daily task tracking, project-level organization, and so on. As long as I do that…

Knowing nothing else about this planner yet, you really gotta give it up to the founder for what he's persevered through to launch it:

> WHY I CREATED PANDA PLANNER

> For over five years of my life, I was hampered by Lyme Disease, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and most recently, Cancer. Each of these on their own was enough to knock me on my back and render me mostly useless, but the combination resulted in a perfect storm of depression, anxiety and inability to think clearly. Naturally this was something of a bummer!

https://pandaplanner.com/pages/about-us

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?

#199

Post by suby »

mezod wrote: post #83
suby wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like there's an issue rendering the page in Firefox. http://i.imgur.com/UizeUqM.png

edit: or better, it should be working now, care to confirm? THANKS hmm that's very bad, thanks for letting me know! It does seem to work properly on firefox here for any screen size, would you mind sharing which FF version are you using? thanks again!

It is indeed working now!

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?

#200

Post by ioddly »

I use a tool that I wrote, evolved from a Trello board: https://github.com/ioddly/meditations

Specifically, there's a daily, monthly, and yearly list, all on the same screen. So if your goal for example is to exercise, you'd be tracking things day by day, but get a monthly summary (e.g. I exercised 75% of the days I was supposed to this month).

I do have some goals in mind, but I find that tying them to time is the wrong way to go. i.e. I'd like to get back to a 2x bodyweight deadlift, but it's better to try and make 100% of my lifting sessions and complete the programs I am on than it is to worry about when exactly I will hit that goal.

So the actual todos are derived from a system that should eventually lead to that goal, rather than achieving the goals. I then evaluate my progress monthly and yearly. (did I do everything I was supposed to? Am I closer to the goal? If not, how should I change the approach?).

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