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

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

#22

Post by sudofail »

I used to do this too, but I think it results in too much scattered focus. What I've done for the last 8 years or so has been really effective, and has reduced my stress quite a bit.

Each year, I pick one larger goal that I want to achieve. It can be learning a new language, completing some Coursera courses, getting fit, traveling, etc. But I find if I just focus on one thing, I'm much more likely to achieve it.

It also reduces the stress to get all these other little things done. I still wind up doing a lot of them, but I don't feel any pressure or compulsion to get them done.

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

#23

Post by Memosyne »

Every couple of months I open a text file, insert headers denoting the coming months, and write down things I have to accomplish under those headers. Whenever I progress an objective, I jot down the task that helped me progress in the past tense. For instance, under January I could add "Spend time with family" and under that I would include "Went snow boarding with siblings".

I do this because I'm not prescient; I don't know how unforeseen circumstances might affect my ability to complete my objectives. By only writing down things that I have completed, I'm not discouraging myself if/when I can't finish something.

Here is an example of what I mean:

# January

    # Work on personal projects

    # Study Graph Theory

        # Algorithms

            - Implemented Dijkstra's algorithm

        # Books

            - Read "Introduction to Graph Theory" by Richard J Trudeau
In short, I just organize my ideas into broad categories and then when I think I've progressed, I further categorize it.

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

#24

Post by davidscolgan »

mezod wrote: post #19
dharmapure wrote: post #6

I 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,…

I very much identify with the struggle of lots of different projects. Another thing that's helped me recently is to make it "impossible not to" do the thing I want to do. I managed to solve my exercise problem by hiring a personal trainer. Now I lose $80 if I don't go to the gym at a specific time on Monday and Friday. I've not missed a day in months. I've wondered if with certain ways of arranging my environment if working on projects could be similarly solved in that they require no motivation or willpower because there's no other option.

Cheers, and thanks for posting this question. Just writing out some of my ideas here is helpful since I'm certainly working on this right now too.

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

#25

Post by erikvann »

By "life gets in between", do you mean that you have things you want to do but other random things pop up and you do those instead? If so this is a prioritization issue and maybe you need to start saying "no". If you can't really say no, then you need to plan for these things instead of letting them derail you.

Also as I am sure you know, you always think that you can get more done than you actually can. Plan to do less. I like to keep a list of things I'm working on this week and what I intend to finish today. I journal every morning about what is still in the today list. It helps me think about why that happened and what I can do about it.

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

#26

Post by dharmapure »

mondo9000 wrote: post #8

Realize that this behavior is just fancy procrastination. I can collect recipes all day, but it won't make me a better cook.

Procrastination is fun and complicated. "Just Do It" doesn't seem to help much for me. After reading more I've found a number of reasons for procrastination that may be helpful depending on the cause:

Is the task too vague? If so, making it more concrete helps. "Do taxes" is impossibly vague and scary and the brain rebels. "Make a list of all expenses this year" is better but still large. This is the most common actually helpful advice I've found. But also

Do you not actually care about the task? Having a grand overarching goal for your career/life can help you make sure the task is worth doing. Or for something like taxes, you can say "this helps me achieve my goal because if I don't pay my taxes I'll probably go to jail."

Do you not believe your project will succeed? This is a subtle one I only recently discovered. If I'm working on an app or a business idea and I get to the point where I don't believe it has a chance, I strongly lose motivation. Some say this is a survival mechanism - if a hunter gatherer had a plan to kill a wooley mammoth with a spear up close and that'd probably result in death, a strong sense of "procrastination" could be a lifesaver.

Is it resistance to something that threatens your identity? This is a fun one - maybe you've internalized that you don't finish projects (I've had some of this I think). Finishing a project would threaten your "identity" of a non finisher, and some part of the brain _hates_ things that threaten it's identity. I think this one you just have to figure out a way to push through, and give that part of the brain fodder to convince itself that it's identity is not of "doesn't finish projects". The same can be true of earning money, and other kinds of success.

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

#29

Post by b_b »

I would recommend for you to read and implement the organization/productivity system from Getting Things Done by David Allen [0]. It discusses essentially your main problems of dividing up your life into projects and timing yourself. The system also includes sections for putting some of your ideas in an 'Incubate', basically putting it off for another day once you get through what you have. Having a running list of all your commitments and projects like the system does I think will help you to analyze your time usage and realistic expectations for your productivity and stuff you want to engage in.

[0] = https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produ...

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

#30

Post by davidscolgan »

stevenkovar wrote: post #18

Keep 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.

Similar Warren Buffet's methodology - consider your top 25 priorities. Then pick the top 5. The next 20 are your "avoid at all costs" list, since they will always try to distract you.

I really like the idea of working on large and also small projects, since just sticking to one and only one thing is not always feasible.

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