3 biggest things rule.
Ask HN: How do you manage your daily non-work related tasks?
41–50 of 56 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your daily non-work related tasks?
#42I let them pile up into a big anxious horror too repulsive to even approach until absolutely necessary, at which point I sloppily and with great frustration do the very least I can to somehow postpone the ever-escalating disaster that will be my personal undoing. You mean you think there's another way?
Great description of a typical project managament environment. You need to add something in regards of demotivation etc.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your daily non-work related tasks?
#43I let them pile up into a big anxious horror too repulsive to even approach until absolutely necessary, at which point I sloppily and with great frustration do the very least I can to somehow postpone the ever-escalating disaster that will be my personal undoing. You mean you think there's another way?
The same way I attend to the tasks I'm delegated at work: do the bare minimum necessary to get the product out the door while the maintenance and housecleaning pile up to the point I can't ignore it and then do the bare minimum necessary to control that bit of chaos.
This is also how I approach the relationship with my life-in partner.
With enough caffeine, and the bare minimum of sleep, I believe we can, collectively, run the planet like this till the wheels fall off. Or, at least, that does seem to be human's modus operandi.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your daily non-work related tasks?
#44A rule of piles - pile up things you don't know how to sort in one place but keep the rest of the space clean. This can be applied to room cleaning but also to your tasks. There a todo list can serve as a 'mental' pile for tasks.
This helps immensely to keep your mind from multitasking between actually doing some work or resting and self-reflection on the things you haven't sorted yet.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your daily non-work related tasks?
#45I don't manage them. Managing tasks doesn't change the likelihood of them being done; it only changes the order in which they'll get done, if they get done at all. Changing the way you plan won't magically motivate you to do stuff. The way I get tasks done is by doing them immediately I see that they need doing. If you can develop that habit then tasks won't even need managing, you won't need to set time aside to do…
> Changing the way you plan won't magically motivate you to do stuff.
Don't assume that the way something is for you is the way it is for everyone. People's brains work very differently.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your daily non-work related tasks?
#46I use Omnifocus and a physical notebook.
Omnifocus: I throw everything that comes to mind to the inbox, whenever it occurs to me. Usually on weekends or whenever I panic about feeling things are spinning out of control, I'll go through and organize it, grouping things and adding dates. In the morning while waking up, I browse a bit, deciding what needs to happen.
Two things that work well for me about it:
- the geolocation context stuff is a godsend for remembering random things I need to pick up.
- The fact that uncompleted tasks don't automatically roll forward means I don't constantly have 647 overdue items, and makes me think about what I'm actually, really going to get done.
Notebook: Paper still works best for me for a lot of things. I still make lists there, sketch box diagrams when thinking through things, sketch ideas for stuff to make, collect random info, things that amuse me, etc. Also, it serves as a binder for loose paper/receipts/etc that are still in-flight. I trained myself to write the date and location on every page, and to write out sufficient context for even throwaway notes to actually remember what a given thing is later. This makes them very useful after they're full - I have years of full notebooks on my shelf and reference them more than you might think.
Some not-strictly-related things that reduce the cognitive load of existence for me:
- Once I got to a financial place where I could, I forced myself to start paying every bill the minute it came in. Not having to mentally keep track of due dates and all of that leaves room for worrying about a bunch of other stuff. Nobody gets auto-withdrawl permission, but doing things this way offers the same effect and is trivially easy now that everything is online.
- I scan any paper artifact that doesn't need to be paper. Organizing it is still tedious, but the payoff of actually being able to find something when I need it seems magic. Things tend to build up until I spend a couple hours on it, and then in to the shredder they go. Make sure your backup regimen is solid.
- A little, slightly hokey thing that nonetheless is useful for me: I started writing my (nonwork) goals on a whiteboard in my home office. Just whatever is important right now. Having it physically on the wall seems to provide a little bit of focus, something I frequently need.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your daily non-work related tasks?
#47Todoist and Calendar. Mostly on mac and ios but also win/lin.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your daily non-work related tasks?
#48I use an app called 2Do (obviously, a task manager). It's where I centralise my work and non-work tasks (for work tasks I create specific projects and tasks out of the user stories I'm working on). Also I "outsource" tasks to my partner, when I can (and she does the same) :)
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your daily non-work related tasks?
#49I recently started using GTD. It's a system with three main principles:
1. You need to get all "open loops"—anything you think you need to do or want to do—out of your head and written down. You naturally get rid of these whenever you find yourself mulling over them and distracting from your main task.
2. They should be put in a trusted system that is both complete and has no duplication. Usually this should be separated by context (things to do at work, at home, etc). You should have just this one system, and not jump around between several ad hoc systems (an email inbox here, a list on the fridge there).
3. Each item needs a defined next physical action. So you can't just have something like "plan vacation." You need that to have an attached next action, such as "google hotels in Miami and make a list of options." And then when that's done you replace it with the next physical action and so on, until "plan vacation" is done.
I combine this with a homespun version of pomodoro (where I both work on tasks in 25 minute chunks and block my internet access with apps like Freedom and Stayfocusd for that amount of time). I also review my lists during break periods to get confident I'm doing the right thing. In just a few months I've cleared out a lot of my backlog and removed a lot of the background anxiety that had been plaguing my free time.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your daily non-work related tasks?
#50I have my own set of tools to try to help me in that regard. I keep iterating on it to try to find a flexible solution that covers as much as possible, long term goals, short term goals, projects, etc. I use https://everydaycheck.com to list all the things I want to work on every day, and https://multikanban.com to manage my multiple personal projects. In the end, one divides to conquer, while the other helps me sure…
I've been doing something similar to your everydaycheck app, but manually using google sheets for about a year now. Works great for me too. Your app looks pretty neat!
Does it get much interest from others, or are you the main user?