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How Writing To-Do Lists Helps Your Brain

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Re: How Writing To-Do Lists Helps Your Brain

#31

Post by asadjb »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #27
asadjb wrote: post #26

This first few sentences of this article describe almost exactly how I've been feeling lately: For a long time, I resisted to-do lists. I wanted the flexibility. I felt that if I kept a list, it would tie me down to a particular set of tasks. Gradually, though, I came around. The busier my work life became, the more crucial it was to have some sort of running agenda on hand. It was embarrassing after a few times when…

When I last used Wunderlist, I really disliked how inflexible it was, and how bad it was at handling recurring tasks. I discovered Todoist shortly after, and stuck with it. I think for me, personally, to get anything even more productive, I'd have to write it myself.

Writing something myself is an idea I have brewing in the back of my mind. But it's not something I have any clear ideas about. I have no idea how it should work, only a vague idea that it should be as seamless to my daily routine as TaskWarrior is right now.

But I'm trying to collect notes on how I use Wunderlist and TaskWarrior. Maybe in a few months I'll have a better idea of my usage patterns and then I can come up with something that I'd love to use everywhere.

Do you have any ideas on what you'd like to write yourself? I could get ideas off of you. :)

Re: How Writing To-Do Lists Helps Your Brain

#32

Post by s_kilk »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #27
asadjb wrote: post #26

This first few sentences of this article describe almost exactly how I've been feeling lately: For a long time, I resisted to-do lists. I wanted the flexibility. I felt that if I kept a list, it would tie me down to a particular set of tasks. Gradually, though, I came around. The busier my work life became, the more crucial it was to have some sort of running agenda on hand. It was embarrassing after a few times when…

When I last used Wunderlist, I really disliked how inflexible it was, and how bad it was at handling recurring tasks. I discovered Todoist shortly after, and stuck with it. I think for me, personally, to get anything even more productive, I'd have to write it myself.

+1 for Todoist, really under-rated app, and it works everywhere, including the Web.

Re: How Writing To-Do Lists Helps Your Brain

#33

Post by emdeha »

Over the years, I've switched between several daily TODO lists. I used a plain sticky note in the beginning where I outlined all the tasks I had to do. After that I used Steven Covey's time management matrix, but I found that I'm not using all of its quadrants and some important and urgent tasks were never done on time. Currently I have a TODO list with two columns -- Making, for the long-term things I have to provide substantial amount of undivided attention to; and POSS (projects, organization, skills, social) -- for tasks which require frequent context-switching. It was greatly inspired by Paul Graham's "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" article [1].

For long-term plans, I keep a simple text file categorized by projects where I plan ahead for about one or two weeks and put deadlines for my plans. I derive these plans from my long-term goals, for which I store the big picture in various mediums (Trello, E-mails, text files, written conversations, paper, etc.)

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

Re: How Writing To-Do Lists Helps Your Brain

#34

Post by bbcbasic »

zump wrote: post #21
movedx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to hear your experiences on this, such as what apps you've tried and had fail for you in terms of productivity? I would agree with what you've said to a point, but this kind of statement needs expanding. For my wife and I, we're using Wunderlist (bought my Microsoft in 2015) and we can assign things to each other, star them as important, comment on tasks, leaves notes, set reminders, and so on…

I've tried OneNote, WorkFlowy and a few no name Android apps. Platform issues and friction is far too high. Even just loading up the browser, or context switching to a different tab. Plus... if your work is of mathematical nature, it's an added headache.

I use the simple notes app on my Huawei phone. It's just notepad.exe basically but helps me a lot

Re: How Writing To-Do Lists Helps Your Brain

#35

Post by asadjb »

Ayaz wrote: post #29

No application I've ever tried has worked for me in the sense that I felt it an indispensable part of my life. In almost all instances, after a few days, I always kept forgetting to use the application. Plus, the overhead of using applications seemed to appear significant overtime. I am now successfully down to a good fountain pen and a clear notebook. It is also part of my strategy to break my device-addiction, whic…

I had a similar problem to yours where I would eventually forget to use the application, or just not remember to check it after finishing my current task. That lead to some fun times. My solution; at least for my work todo list, was to create a Python script and use it with the $PERIODIC callback feature of ZSH to show me my task list every 15 minutes in my shell. Since I'm working in a terminal all day long anyway, this in my face approach helped me create a habit of using my todo list (TaskWarrior) for managing my work tasks.

Though I'm still in search of something that helps in the same way for my personal life; phone and personal computer.

P.S: For the interested in how I implement the periodic call back with TaskWarrior, you can find the relevant files on my Github dotfile (https://github.com/theonejb/dotfiles/tree/master/taskwarrior)

Re: How Writing To-Do Lists Helps Your Brain

#36

Post by InclinedPlane »

ktamura wrote: post #5

Over the years, I've tried many digital to-do lists, including one I wrote myself. Today, I just use a notebook. The trick that I made work is to have two to-do lists: daily and quarterly. For daily, it's simple. I have a variation of the Bullet Journal [1], but interleaved with meeting notes, ideas, etc. But many ideas are bigger than what you can accomplish/benchmark on a daily basis. For those, I have two pages pe…

I've tried a zillion to do apps, most of them are just not very good and add a lot of annoying overhead or have super specialized workflows that have tons of shortcomings. I started using a bullet journal in June and it's been a fantastic experience. This is what sold me on the idea: https://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelwmiller/how-to-start-a-bullet...

It's amazing how well organized you can be when you keep track of stuff better.

Another thing I've done is started keeping a sort of checklist/timeline for morning, mid-day, and end of day to make developing habits easier as well as just keeping up on to-do stuff. One of the most useful things has been to add some elements from things like this, which is a significant quality of life boost: http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2016/02/evening-ritual

Also, journals are great for facilitating things like CBT for anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc.

Re: How Writing To-Do Lists Helps Your Brain

#37

Post by InclinedPlane »

ai_maker wrote: post #25
ljk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also pen-and-paper note taker here. there's something satisfying about physically crossing off a list when a pen after spending 10+hrs typing

Very true, but in the real world where what's urgent goes before what's important, you are often forced to reschedule stuff, and the pen&paper approach clearly is in disadvantage here. My solution is a dynamic todo called myTinyTodo [1], a very simple app where I can sort stuff by project, deadline, importance, etc. [1] http://www.mytinytodo.net/

I reschedule stuff all the time, it's not a huge deal, you just copy a few items from one list into another, it takes a few seconds usually. And actually, I find I like it this way because if I hit a point where I realize I'm rescheduling too much stuff too often it tells me that I need to either follow through more often or not be so optimistic in scheduling things so much.

Committing to do a thing in a given time period should be kind of a big deal. If you don't need to commit to a thing in a specific time, then just leave it in a more general master list (e.g. monthly, or generic) and commit to it when you have the time.

Re: How Writing To-Do Lists Helps Your Brain

#38

Post by DiabloD3 »

asadjb wrote: post #31
DiabloD3 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I last used Wunderlist, I really disliked how inflexible it was, and how bad it was at handling recurring tasks. I discovered Todoist shortly after, and stuck with it. I think for me, personally, to get anything even more productive, I'd have to write it myself.

Writing something myself is an idea I have brewing in the back of my mind. But it's not something I have any clear ideas about. I have no idea how it should work, only a vague idea that it should be as seamless to my daily routine as TaskWarrior is right now. But I'm trying to collect notes on how I use Wunderlist and TaskWarrior. Maybe in a few months I'll have a better idea of my usage patterns and then I can come…

Unlimited priority levels (as opposed to just 4), more cohesive project parenting (I can parent projects, but Todoist sometimes won't list items from child projects if I ask for the parent in some areas but not others), and probably exchange Todoist's query language for straight up SQL ala JPQL-esque usage.

Other than that, Todoist gets very little wrong (and they're constantly polishing the more mundate UX parts, which is also an important part of any frequently used app).

Their team has been often very responsive to my requests, and have also been working on integrations into other services (which is often a sore spot for 'cloud' services).

Re: How Writing To-Do Lists Helps Your Brain

#39

Post by vram22 »

Interesting thread.

Wondering if anyone here has tried using shorthand, a.k.a. stenography, for to-do lists?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand

I remember people using it much earlier, and it was offered in a neighborhood typing class I took as a kid. Plus, had seen books about it then.

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