Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 291 posts

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

#261

Post by bayindirh »

mbohde wrote: post #259
bayindirh wrote: post #215

I have a tiered storage for my to do lists. The biggest storage (also the longest term) is Trello. I have a board with many "lists" in Trello term. Some examples: - Learning - Software development - Home (repairs, improvements, etc.) - Physical organization* - Digital organization* etc. *: Having lots of data and items create its own mess. However, the most important four lists in my Trello board are - ToDo (what I'v…

I also like the pomodoro technique but i have a hard time choosing a good looking app. I came across mater from Jason Long [1] but it still need some work under the hood. It is based on Electron. [1] https://github.com/jasonlong/mater

Which OS are you using? I'm using Be Focused Pro on iOS and macOS. It's a paid application, but it's very refined and can hold nice statistics.

I tracked my progress when I was writing my Ph.D. dissertation, and it helped me tremendously. I can even see the "end crunch" on the statistics, which is very satisfying.

Last, but not the least, macOS and iOS version synchronizes, so when I use my Linux workstation, use the iOS version to keep track of time.

About Electron, this is how I feel: https://twitter.com/iamdevloper/status/1072503943790497798

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

#262

Post by all_usernames »

Covey's "7 Habits" taught me everything I needed to know.

I use the app Things to throw new items into an Inbox. This takes half a second and doesn't distract me from whatever it is I'm working on at the time.

Later, when I have a free moment, I use the classic time management grid to mentally map every item in the Inbox into one of four categories:

1. Urgent & Important

2. Not Urgent but Important

3. Urgent but Not Important

4. Not Urgent & Not Important

(Visualized as a 2x2 matrix)

This categorization step could be done once a day or once an hour depending on how much incoming work there is.

Based on the outcome of that quick assessment, I move the item into one of the categories 'Things' provides out-of-the-box: Today, Someday, Any time. And I have tags for every project or area of responsibility I have. During this step I usually take a few minutes to fill in some details about the task that I don't want to forget. Sometimes I realize the task is an entire project in itself, so it gets a new tag or Project item in Things.

Every day I start out by scanning my projects and moving items into the Today list. The day is done when I've checked them all off (yeah, right!)

It's all derived, I believe, from the Getting Things Done methodology.

[1] https://www2.usgs.gov/humancapital/documents/TimeManagementG... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done

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

#263

Post by nextos »

klenwell wrote: post #143
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-…

I do something very similar but I use a Trello board with columns like these. Specifically: - Daily - Weekly - Monthly - [YEAR] Completed I like Trello because the cards support checklists, due dates, and comments which are great features for promoting habits associated with getting stuff done. Some cards are recurring (getting moved from monthly or weekly to daily column), others are finishable. I take a small but r…

For any workflow, it is worth considering org-mode. It has certainly satisfied me after trying many different alternatives.

It is plain text, so you are not locked into a proprietary object format. Thus, you can edit it using any text editor in case Emacs is not around. In fact, Vim is on its way towards implementing a decent subset of org-mode. GitHub and GitLab also support org-mode syntax and can even render HTML from it. There are also decent mobile clients, and even some bridges to things like Trello.

Emacs has lots of org-mode primitives that can be used to deploy any workflow. Moving items across sections or files can be efficiently done using org-refile. Storing new items on the flight from many different places can be done using org-capture and org-protocol. More importantly, you can easily create alternative views of your files using org-agenda. org-mode also has timestamps, so you can set schedules, deadlines or simply record events.

I've just scratched the surface. My favorite workflow is Ivy Lee's Method, which is a very basic kanban with two states. Easy to implement in org-mode. Just two trees: Today and Inbox. Every morning I refile 6 tasks from Inbox to Today. I keep new thoughts and important items with deadlines, etc inside my Inbox. I can use org-agenda to quickly see if there are any incoming deadlines or events, which I store in a separate calendar file.

If you want to get fancy, you can use lots of trees, one per project. And create lots of tasks to plan things ahead. Then use task states to schedule things for today and get a clean view, again, using org-agenda or a sparse tree. There are infinite possibilities.

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

#264

Post by graeme »

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?

I'm trying op's system. I put the text files in a top level folder in dropbox. So any machine of mine can access them.

For iphone/ipad, I use Textor to quickly access and edit them. It's faster than the dropbox app, which requires taps to get to the right place and a further tap for edit mode. Textor is about as fast as on my computer.

I'm guessing android has an equivalent app.

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

#266

Post by vkaku »

I try to focus on doing a few things and few things right. IMO it is better than taking up too many things and having to maintain all of them.

I believe in zero interference. I schedule things with a good gap between them so they can all take place.

I do not try hard to do the next coolest thing.

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

#267

Post by ivanmaeder »

organsnyder wrote: post #5

I've come to terms with the fact that I'm never going to have enough time in life to do everything I want to do. And I'm okay with that—I always have something on the list that I feel is worth doing, so it's hard to lose a sense of purpose. When I'm overwhelmed with must-dos (rather than just want-to-dos), I try to remind myself that I just need to be doing something . It might not be the perfectly optimal thing to b…

"It might not be the perfectly optimal…"

Indeed.

I recently discovered Pomodoro helps me stop worrying about doing the most optimal thing: it gives me an "excuse" to just do one thing for 25 minutes at a time. What's the harm!

An interesting side effect of doing something/anything is that soon enough the real priorities become clearer.

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

#268

Post by trecorcorin »

https://ideatosafe.com/

visual here: https://imgur.com/17XxTmX

1. mindmap that syncs all devices, type on your phone, see changes on TV immediately

2. super intuitive gamified keyboard shortcuts (no need for mouse); super intuitive mobile gestures

3. has node-level in-browser encryption via tweetnacl so if you provide a crypt key, only you can see what you typed under a crypted node - crypted data looks like gibberish in the db and there is NO way to recover it, except you provide your crypt key. If you lose your key, you have lost the data under all crypted nodes, forever

4. copy/paste nodes to/from freeplane/freemind directly onto your map

5. full disclosure - I am the developer and working on a second release, sign-ups paused for now but I can open it up for signups if there is interest in working on the beta - I use it to organize my entire life

join waiting list here: i2swaitinglist@sonkomail.com

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

#269

Post by lostgame »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #155
lostgame wrote: post #148

I have an iMac G4 on my desk that I use solely for design and keeping ideas together. I find the computer’s design to be extremely inspirational, and it keeps me active.

It's an interesting idea, I've been thinking about using a separate device for anything online to try and remove the temptation of the internet. Funnily enough I just gave away my iMac G4 today.

Oh, I still use the internet. WebKitLeopard is up-to-date and not a RAM whore like TenFourFox.

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

#270

Post by raybb »

burtonator wrote: post #184
acuozzo wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered a web app version? I move around quite a bit and often don't have access to a PC on which I can install software.

Yes... that and mobile but I have to do a significant amount of work to make that happen. I think probably web version first.

Do you have any idea how it would work? I'm just curious. If you get started I hope you could find some frontend devs to help you out.
Post reply on HN