I’ve found some use in having a “vision document”, which is essentially a written explanation of the person I want to be / goal I want to accomplish. If it’s possible to add images, those help too. The more complete the vision, the better. By reading this every day with my morning coffee, I help re-orient myself and remember the path I was on. Without it, I tend to drift.
Ask HN: How do you manage your life: set goals, plan, manage time, etc.?
21–30 of 32 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your life: set goals, plan, manage time, etc.?
#22White board and pen Pen and paper Google sheets / docs, so my partner and I can share things Sometimes I email myself thigns Voice assistant scheduling "Hey google, reminder tomorrow at 3pm to take out the garbage" or such like. That's it. Anything more complicated creates more friction than value.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your life: set goals, plan, manage time, etc.?
#23I’ve found some use in having a “vision document”, which is essentially a written explanation of the person I want to be / goal I want to accomplish. If it’s possible to add images, those help too. The more complete the vision, the better. By reading this every day with my morning coffee, I help re-orient myself and remember the path I was on. Without it, I tend to drift.
How long-term your vision is? Is it 1-year or 10-year or maybe 30-year? I have met a guy who had a vision for 50 years ahead - sound crazy but works for him.
One, five, and ten years seem like good markers for me.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your life: set goals, plan, manage time, etc.?
#24Otherwise I have some temporary notes on paper, phone or laptop.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your life: set goals, plan, manage time, etc.?
#25Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your life: set goals, plan, manage time, etc.?
#26It's not easy.
Here's some pointers :
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-new-home/201...
https://einzelganger.co/how-to-increase-conscientiousness/
There's likely more out there, obviously.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your life: set goals, plan, manage time, etc.?
#27To answer the question behind your question. I think what you're looking for is a way to increase one's personality trait conscientiousness. It's not easy. Here's some pointers : https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-new-home/201... https://einzelganger.co/how-to-increase-conscientiousness/ There's likely more out there, obviously.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your life: set goals, plan, manage time, etc.?
#28To answer the question behind your question. I think what you're looking for is a way to increase one's personality trait conscientiousness. It's not easy. Here's some pointers : https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-new-home/201... https://einzelganger.co/how-to-increase-conscientiousness/ There's likely more out there, obviously.
Conscientiousness is one of the traits, but it is not the only trait important in the process of life planning in my view. I started to think about this topic after re-reading PG's The Anatomy of Determination essay and Sam Altman's Productivity article. http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html?viewfullsite=1 https://blog.samaltman.com/productivity
Of the Big Five personality traits Conscientiousness is the only one strongly predictive of life success. It's the difference between starting a project and petering out or finishing it. It's the difference between self destructive behaviour and grit.
https://medium.com/@bryanye/how-conscientiousness-can-predic...
https://www.beyondinsurance.com/blog/conscientiousness-key-p...
https://www.headstuff.org/topical/science/practical-psycholo...
https://www.utoronto.ca/news/being-conscientious-one-stronge...
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-conscientious-strongest-predic...
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your life: set goals, plan, manage time, etc.?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This may be an unpopular opinion, but I stopped making even close term plans/goals a few months ago What a coincidence I also stopped making even close term plans when I reached 36/37. I felt that I needed to drastically reduce my focus instead of trying to make plans that I had never been able to follow for more than two months.
You must make some sort of plans? I’ve done some backpack traveling and would always have a rough plan that I didn’t follow very well, but I feel the plan helped. I wanted to get to Venice. What would I do when I GOT to Venice? Meet a cool Australian guy to go out drinking all night and ridE around on these water buses to various places all day wasn’t in the plan. So I think an outline of a plan you know will change…
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your life: set goals, plan, manage time, etc.?
#30(I'm friendly with the Complice team on Twitter, because they're cool people, but I'm not a shill!)
Every working day, I start with putting today's intentions into Complice, and then I work with the builtin Pomodoro timer. Intentions are structured by a small set of "goals" or "areas." I have four which I call Wellness, World, Research, and Workshop; every intention belongs to one of those, or misc.
I have a small set of basic daily intentions set up, which includes one I call "settle" which means looking through my inbox and my todo list for actionable items I can do without much thinking, and also replying to messages and stuff like that. So I aim to spend one Pomodoro session there, and the goal is to feel like I've "settled" my basic relation to the world.
That kind of thing was always hard for me to keep up with, and my current success is due to Complice and also getting an ADHD diagnosis with medication late last year, which has helped me transform my life in a major way.
I have a separate system for todos, namely Things for iOS/Mac, where I put future intentions that I want to remember. During the "settle" session, I look at that list, and decide which of the todos I might want to do today, and make them into intentions.
The other cool thing about Complice is that it has weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly reviews. So for example it's Monday morning now, so my next task (after my coffee and internet) is to go through the weekly review form, which shows me an overview of the past week, along with the previous weekly review, and asks me some customizable questions about how it's going for each area of my life.
Getting diagnosed also encouraged me to start the year by participating in Complice's "online goal-crafting workshop" which was fun and interesting. That's the first time I've ever really thought consciously about setting goals for myself!
One insight that I had about goals is that for them to really function as goals, for me, they need to be what I call "visible on the horizon." That basically means I can IMAGINE them, and when I imagine them I feel GOOD, the picture evoked is one that's nice and positive, so that my whole body can orient itself towards it.