I have a 24” x 18” whiteboard that has a Kanban layout on it. Smaller postit notes let me put a lot of things up and I follow the simple “Todo, In Progress, Done” column model. It’s on the wall at home where I have to look at it every day at least a few times.
Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?
11–20 of 291 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?
#12I'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…
Yes
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?
#13Realize that this behavior is just fancy procrastination. I can collect recipes all day, but it won't make me a better cook.
Beautiful
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?
#14I had an epiphany of sorts about this when working on a freelance project with a client who was particularly organized. They had a kanban board split up into Inbox (ideas and incoming features and bugs), Backlog (accepted tasks), In Progress (doing right now), Review (for others to look at), and Complete columns. At the beginning of a sprint, the project manager sat down for about 10 minutes and looked at all the car…
Another thought I once realized - I think early on in my career I heard about Agile and thought it meant "not planning at all". This seems to _not_ be true at all but I think it made me subtly opposed to planning. I now see that it is more about shorter iterations, and The Twelve Week Year talks a lot about effective "just in time" planning, on a day, week, and quarterly basis.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?
#15You're probably still trying to do too much.
Another user recommended The One Thing, and I'll second that. You have to always be prioritizing. Figure out what you really, REALLY want to do, and you will make time for it.
I definitely suffer from the "everything looks cool and fun" syndrome. There are a thousand things I want to learn and only enough time to learn maybe three of them.
You can do anything, but you can't do everything. So how do you decide what to do?
I also use a Full Focus Planner and the corresponding method that goes with it, to distill annual goals into quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily habits. FFP is definitely not for everybody, but when I commit to using it I do find I get a lot more done. Then I invariably fall off the wagon.
We're all a work in progress.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?
#16I once read in an biography on the Beatles that they would often hold off on writing down songs till the next day. Their theory was that if their song truly was "that good" they would have no trouble recollecting it the next day. And if they forgot it, then it clearly wasn't worth doing.
I like to apply this principle to a lot of the ideas I choose to work on. It's easy to think that every idea is the cat's pajamas, but sometimes it's best to let the concept cook for a bit. I find that after a few days or so the idea will have either fizzled out, and I'll have forgotten about it, or I'll be itching to really work on it.
This is just my 2 cents.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?
#17You're probably still trying to do too much. Another user recommended The One Thing, and I'll second that. You have to always be prioritizing. Figure out what you really, REALLY want to do, and you will make time for it. I definitely suffer from the "everything looks cool and fun" syndrome. There are a thousand things I want to learn and only enough time to learn maybe three of them. You can do anything, but you can'…
Something that helped me regarding this - I took some time and made a document that contained every project on my plate. I realized I was trying to do 11+ projects of significant size. And as such I was really doing not much at all from worrying about not working on all the projects I wasn't working on right now when working on another project. Ack! But it's so easy to fall into that, especially for ambitious people like OP.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?
#18Keep a rotating list of 20 goals—5 big, 15 small.
Star the 3 most important to you.
Put in time on one of the three each day until you fatigue.
Work then on one of the smaller goals.
Cross one off? File it for future reference, then replace.
Don't be hesitant to edit out and replace outdated goals. Your perspective can (and absolutely should) change quickly as you accomplish things you set out to do.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?
#19I had an epiphany of sorts about this when working on a freelance project with a client who was particularly organized. They had a kanban board split up into Inbox (ideas and incoming features and bugs), Backlog (accepted tasks), In Progress (doing right now), Review (for others to look at), and Complete columns. At the beginning of a sprint, the project manager sat down for about 10 minutes and looked at all the car…
Thanks for this David.
Funnily, 5 years ago I developed my own personal kanban tool. It's still running on http://multikanban.com Of course Trello is a thousand times more powerful and polished. I was just sharing to show that I had my "personal kanban" phase in the past. It worked for some time... but for some reason I stopped really benefiting from it. The idea was to have multiple kanban boards easily accessible, where each board would be a project. "Todos", "Money", "Family", "Refurbish motorcycle", "Code projext X", etc. Of course it worked nicely for specific projects since it helps you be very critical about what gets done and what doesn't. But I think the problem I experienced there is that basically I ended up working on a single project, two at best. Like they were top priority and they never got finished, so I missed on everything else. I still have this problem now, that's why I try something different like having specific times of the day/week allocated to "main project", "sideproject", "money", etc. I just feel that the more thought I put into it, the more complex the system becomes, the less likely is it for me to follow it through.
I did https://everyday.app to sort of define a schedule of habits I want to follow through every day, and so I feel progress in all directions I want to work on.
Thanks for the book recommendations :)
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?
#20I use index cards and pen/pencil. i keep them around me car/home etc and I write ideas, to do list, whatever on them and as I finish/archive what I wrote on the card I toss it away. Please note I am an old person
^ Occam's razor.