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Ask HN: Do you plan your next day ahead?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you plan your next day ahead?

#71

Post by mholmes680 »

frogfuzion wrote: post #18
mholmes680 wrote: post #12

I use Trello, with Todo, doing, deferred and done columns. If you want to go full scrum, great, but that's too much overhead. Signed wife up as well, so it works for both of us. I also have Alexa in four rooms to push my to do list into Trello via ifttt for those dishwashing moments. IMO, and off topic a bit, Amazon killed their dash button market when they packaged three Dots for $120.

I'm not sure why you are downvoted. It's not quite fair since you are answering the question. But in all honesty this kind of existence sounds strange to me. Edit: changed horrific to strange. if my wife and I lived by todo lists on Alexa we would never have any fun.

I think I would agree with you, if I didnt have kids. But two kids under three, and you kind of dont know whats what after a few months.

My wife still uses pencil and pen so maybe someone will upvote me for that. Silly me thinking this was a tech audience.

Re: Ask HN: Do you plan your next day ahead?

#72

Post by didibus »

mrleinad wrote: post #34
didibus wrote: post #29

Here's what works best for me: Write down big life goals for 6 months, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years and 30 years. Every month, re-read/revise your list. This allows your subconscious to calibrate what truly matters to you. When I say every month, it's loose, everytime you feel you can't remember the essence of your life goals, you should read them again and think if they still relate to you. Every morning, choose to ge…

What does a 30 year goal look like? "Be successful in life"? "Have great kids"? Can't help but think that I'll probably be close to dying in 30 years, so I'm not sure what my goal can be, other than "be able not to forget who I am, have some money to live, and not shit my pants"

The 30 year one is great, because it makes you realize how very few things matters in the long run. It helps put perspective on all the other goals.

If you are very ambitious, you can think of things that would take close to 30 years to achieve like any kind of scientific discovery, or becoming a senator, or president, or coach to a professional sports team, etc.

I'm not that ambitious, so I have goals that relate more towards the legacy I want to leave behind and the environment I'd want for myself when I'm old. Examples would be things like: I have children who think of me positively, I'm inspiring to others (could specify in what way if you want), I've lived a life of honesty, I've been fair to others, I'm retired, I'm as healthy as can be, I live in the company of loved ones, I have an active social life, I have more then 5 friends I still talk to regularly, I have the means to sustain myself, I'm still active in a hobby, I have no regret, etc.

The 30 year goal basically forces you to define for yourself what it means to have a great and successful life. When I did it, I realized that for me, having real strong meaningful relationships was most important, I couldn't think that 30 years from now anything else would matter to me. So maybe in 10 years I want to become a Principal engineer, but in 30 years I won't care if I did or not, but I'd care if I lost all my friends and sabotaged my social life.

Its toughest to come up with the 30 year goals, but the exercise is worth it I think.

Re: Ask HN: Do you plan your next day ahead?

#74

Post by josephcs »

TL;DR: This is just an add-on to OP's question - how it has worked for me. I've been following this and I'm looking for a better way to track.

I was experimenting with it a couple of days and here's a quick brief.

How: All I used was Apple Notes on my phone to plan out the whole of next day the previous night. I would break the sections into "Morning", "Afternoon", "Evening", "Night" and add multiple checkboxes that act as to-dos for each part of the day.

Did it work?

Yes, and I would really recommend it. It feels great and gives you superpowers since you already know what to do during the day, and that you don't have to randomly find things to work on as your day progresses. This majorly improved my morning schedule which I would otherwise spend on checking emails, partially reading HN & Medium, oscillate between applications and be distracted. This also improved my productivity and I felt I should be checking off items one by one. The balance from the day would move to the next day, if applicable.

Why did I pause: The same reason OP started this thread for. I wanted to have a better way to handle the habits, and get an idea on how I perform and my completeness ratio. There are certain habits that get replicated across days. Notes is just meant to be a note-taking app. I wanted to try Trello with lists for each part of the day, but again, the completeness part is what I am really interested in.

Re: Ask HN: Do you plan your next day ahead?

#75

Post by kreeWall »

cbcoutinho wrote: post #16

I use the bullet journal system, which is essentially a way to structuralize a notebook. Instead of removing redundancy, it embraces it. 1. Make yourself a very brief year plan 2. Every month refer to year plan and go into detail as needed for that month. 3. At the beginning of every week, make a plan while referring to the month plan. 4. In the morning give yourself a daily plan or keep notes to help stay on track.…

This right here! Many people try to make bullet journaling an art, though it's supposed to be quick and easy, not time consuming and pretty.

Re: Ask HN: Do you plan your next day ahead?

#77

Post by tushartyagi »

cbcoutinho wrote: post #16

I use the bullet journal system, which is essentially a way to structuralize a notebook. Instead of removing redundancy, it embraces it. 1. Make yourself a very brief year plan 2. Every month refer to year plan and go into detail as needed for that month. 3. At the beginning of every week, make a plan while referring to the month plan. 4. In the morning give yourself a daily plan or keep notes to help stay on track.…

I also tried using bullet-journaling for a while but fell back to the yearwise hardcover diary of sorts (something like my father used)[1]. I think that does the job easily without me getting bothered by creating things like monthly and yearly calendar and some other lists. The templates are already present.

Just for information, did you pick up bullet journal after using any other (paper or web) tools? Were there any advantages compared to the other tools?

Having said that, my problem is more about following the systems religiously rather than starting them. For example, creating a morning ritual to plan my day/month/etc. has been a difficult task because most of the times I plainly forget about it. :(

[1]http://www.graphicimage.com/v/vspfiles/photos/AJL-GTI-TUP-4....

Re: Ask HN: Do you plan your next day ahead?

#78

Post by cbcoutinho »

tushartyagi wrote: post #77
cbcoutinho wrote: post #16

I use the bullet journal system, which is essentially a way to structuralize a notebook. Instead of removing redundancy, it embraces it. 1. Make yourself a very brief year plan 2. Every month refer to year plan and go into detail as needed for that month. 3. At the beginning of every week, make a plan while referring to the month plan. 4. In the morning give yourself a daily plan or keep notes to help stay on track.…

I also tried using bullet-journaling for a while but fell back to the yearwise hardcover diary of sorts (something like my father used)[1]. I think that does the job easily without me getting bothered by creating things like monthly and yearly calendar and some other lists. The templates are already present. Just for information, did you pick up bullet journal after using any other (paper or web) tools? Were there an…

I never used those notebooks because they contain too much structure. If I miss a week then I have a number of blank pages, and I would rather have consecutive pages of text rather than blank pages when I didn't plan anything. YMMV

I use Evernote quite a bit, but it was a bit restrictive for me when I tried to do my planning in either using my phone or the desktop/web application. I like to doodle and make quick tables - basically just using a pen and paper. Evernote ended up being too slow for me as well, now I have a notebook with some bookmark ribbons to switch between my yearly and weekly planning sheets. That is difficult to do with Evernote IMO.

As for following it religiously, I miss weeks as well, and I don't really note my days as much as I probably should. What I do make sure to keep consistent is a weekly plan, and right now I'm able to get one week done in about 5 minutes - enough for a cup of coffee on Sunday morning. I think the secret is to keep it as short and sweet as possible. I used to take 30 minutes or more, but that ended up being overkill and I didn't look forward to creating my layouts. Now planning my week is easy and I look forward to it

Re: Ask HN: Do you plan your next day ahead?

#79

Post by swah »

afarrell wrote: post #70

I've started doing this and it has done great things for my productivity. I just sit down with the trello board for my current project in one window and google calendar in the next window. I pick two cards, think about if I need to reach out to anyone in order to do them, and block out the time on my calendar. During the day, if I change what I'm doing, I change the events on the calendar. It makes it much easier to…

So you create an event "calling tom" from 09:00 to 09:30, then call tom? Then check how long that took, and adjust on calendar?

Re: Ask HN: Do you plan your next day ahead?

#80

Post by tmaly »

I have been using the 5 minute journal to plan my big goals and reflect on what I accomplished in a day.

As for specific todo lists, I use either a notebook for longer lists or Google Keep app to hold shorter todo lists.

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