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Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?

#241

Post by lovelearning »

MarsAscendant wrote: post #178
lovelearning wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revisiting: Yes, all the time. The yearly plan would be framed at the start of the year, but new opportunities and personal ideas arise quite often and unexpectedly. If something can help me achieve my life goals better, the entire planning cascade gets reprioritized from that point on. I have done things like defer personal projects, drop ideas that turned out to be impractical after prototyping (an example of a wro…

> Leisure time is very much part of the daily plan. I put tasks like jogging, workout, reading, going out in all my plans. This kind of discipline sounds impressive. (I don't think I can follow something quite so meticulous: it'll probably confuse me.) How do you fill out a `todo`? Are they different for each category? are they mostly similar? under the same template?

You can be as meticulous or as high-level as you want, depending on your disposition.

Because my default state is one of procrastination and laziness, I have to explicitly plan such things. If I don't, the other work or distractions will just expand to fill my time, and I'll just keep perpetually delaying them only to find at the EOM that I didn't indulge in my favorite hobby for even 1 hour the entire month, and that feels really bad. My system has evolved to overcome my own mental handicaps.

But I personally know 5x times more productive people - with spouses and multiple kids and time sinks like house constructions - who don't do anything like what I do and still manage to fulfil all their professional and personal plans much better than I do.

I have only one daily, one weekly, one monthly and one yearly file. Each file covers all categories of life goals. Organizing categories into multiple files seems natural at first and I had tried it in the past with mind mapping tools, but quickly realized that tracking and updating them is inconvenient and didn't really help me with planning my day. Here's an excerpt[1] from my daily todo to show what 2 days daily plan looked like - maybe it gives a better idea of what I'm describing.

[1]: https://pastebin.com/tXtyXuEU

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?

#242

Post by unityByFreedom »

chasd00 wrote: post #89

I make a spreadsheet with columns task, LOE ( 1-5, 1 = highest LOE ), Priority ( 1-5, 5 = highest priority ). Then sum the LOE and Priority columns, sort the sum desc, there's your task list. This makes highest priority but lowest level of effort tasks come to the top which maximizes productivity (in my case anyway)

I do something similar,

Priority = Benefit / (Time to complete)

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?

#244

Post by baxtr »

lovelearning wrote: post #131
baxtr wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 columns in Trello wouldn’t do the job?

It's a subjective preference. I have tried Trello in the past over an extended period, but it didn't motivate me to keep using it. Elsewhere, I have talked about solving disorganization by knowing the quirks of one's own mind. One of my quirks was internet distractions, and at one point, it got so bad that I'd simply keep my router switched off and use an inconvenient mobile for any research. No easy internet=less di…

Thanks for your answer. I use something similar but in Trello. It is ok for me.

BTW: your method reminded me of this article which influenced my thinking around self organizing

https://www.jotform.com/blog/success-without-motivation/

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?

#245

Post by tibu »

crabl wrote: post #172

I wrote my own task management application that I use to organize long-term goals (and different aspects of my life) into high-level categories (represented by sections on the page like “work” vs. “home” vs. “personal”), and more granular categories (represented by cards of tasks) as they become more well-defined, or if i want to group tasks into a “project”. I can break cards into tasks and schedule them within the…

This app look really useful. Is it possible to try it out?

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?

#246

Post by lovelearning »

baxtr wrote: post #244
lovelearning wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a subjective preference. I have tried Trello in the past over an extended period, but it didn't motivate me to keep using it. Elsewhere, I have talked about solving disorganization by knowing the quirks of one's own mind. One of my quirks was internet distractions, and at one point, it got so bad that I'd simply keep my router switched off and use an inconvenient mobile for any research. No easy internet=less di…

Thanks for your answer. I use something similar but in Trello. It is ok for me. BTW: your method reminded me of this article which influenced my thinking around self organizing https://www.jotform.com/blog/success-without-motivation/

That article really resonates with my thinking, thanks for the link. In the past, my planning used to be guided purely by what ideas I found exciting. Important, but unexciting tasks were deferred or left unattended. My system now allows me to work on tasks even on days when I don't particularly feel like working on them.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?

#247

Post by rasengan0 »

For rapid capture Using Joe's triage system https://joearms.github.io/#2018-12-26%20Fun%20with%20the%20T...

in TiddlyWiki https://tiddlywiki.com

archiving enduring stuff in

https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki

but it goes against reuse philosophy in tiddlywiki https://tiddlywiki.com/#Philosophy%20of%20Tiddlers

but in VimWiki i have the power of :VimWikiGenerateLinks which adds all entries into auto completion of any wiki entry invoked by C-n

But it is hard not to stay fully vested in TiddlyWiki when you have cool stuff like this by Eric Shulman https://groups.google.com/d/msg/tiddlywiki/yzVdb42TUBI/mWXIB...

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?

#248

Post by rasengan0 »

mourner wrote: post #90

I love the Bullet Journal system [1], writing yearly/monthly/daily goals in an old-fashioned paper notebook. Somehow it makes it much easier to reason about compared to keeping digital to-do lists. [1] https://bulletjournal.com

Indeed I analog with fountain pen and handmade notebooks for X17 for mobile. The physical act of writing shit down has made all the difference. If I need to track or posterity, it goes in Tiddlywiki and/or VimWiki

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?

#249

Post by Robinxd »

billfruit wrote: post #68
lovelearning wrote: post #40

4 text files that go from vague life goals down to concrete hourly tasks: - todo-year.txt : all goals for the year - todo-month.txt : track subset of annual goals to finish this month - todo-week.txt : track all monthly high-level tasks to finish this week - todo.txt : daily task plan based on weekly plan. Switch tasks every 1 hour. In a day, I plan for about 4 tasks, so each task ends up getting about 2 hours. Self-…

What if you are traveling, and can't access your pc?

Check out syncthing or resiliosync

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?

#250

Post by PapaSlug »

chasd00 wrote: post #89

I make a spreadsheet with columns task, LOE ( 1-5, 1 = highest LOE ), Priority ( 1-5, 5 = highest priority ). Then sum the LOE and Priority columns, sort the sum desc, there's your task list. This makes highest priority but lowest level of effort tasks come to the top which maximizes productivity (in my case anyway)

Nice idea. Would you share the template?
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