Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by pqdbr » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

slsii wrote: post #32

b_b wrote: post #29

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 a…

I second this recommendation with a suggestion that has hugely helped me. I have more or less copied the approach to to-do lists described in that book into a Trello board and then – importantly – made it my home page on Chrome. This accomplishes two things for me: 1) any time I open a new tab, I get a reminder of what needs to be done 2) adding an item or recording an idea to be processed later is just a cmd-t away.…

Could you provide a template for you trello board?

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

#92

Post by JunkDNA » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

b_b wrote: post #29

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 a…

I agree completely. This book was recommended to me as “life changing”. I was skeptical given that my experience is that 90% of self help books are a rehash of “How to win Friends and Influence People”.

As I have moved into professional roles with progressively more responsibility, the tools and techniques in this book are what have allowed me to scale myself out in a way that my prior ways of working would not have enabled. Many productivity tips (such as inbox zero) have their roots in this book.

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

#93

Post by taurath » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

justadudeama wrote: post #81

b_b wrote: post #29

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 a…

I agree with this as well. Reading this book really helped me get organized. Some of the information on it is getting a _little_ bit dated. In particular, it talks a lot about the different 'contexts' you have your tasks to complete, like at home, at work, at a coffee shop, etc. I feel like this holds up a little bit less nowadays, because almost the entirety of all my work can be done if I have my laptop with me. Th…

I find the idea of contexts holds up even more importantly - In fact if you are constantly context switching (social phone at work, etc) it may be something you have to enforce yourself

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

#94

Post by lovelearning » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #63

lovelearning wrote: post #40

4 text files that go from vague life goals down to concrete hourly tasks: - todo-year.txt : all goals for the year - todo-month.txt : track subset of annual goals to finish this month - todo-week.txt : track all monthly high-level tasks to finish this week - todo.txt : daily task plan based on weekly plan. Switch tasks every 1 hour. In a day, I plan for about 4 tasks, so each task ends up getting about 2 hours. Self-…

Hoe do you review and decide what to move between places? And, how do you handle smaller todos: get milk, register domain, clean fridge, call dentist, etc Do those go in the list, or are they handled elsewhere? Review and menial tasks are the two things that trip up my efforts at a system. Also, where do you keep working notes for tasks in these lists: in the list or elsewhere? I'm very interested, it sounds like a g…

Reviewing: I review the daily todo every morning and update it every night, and I do EOW and EOM status updates with detailed analyses for the weekly and monthly files. Why could I not finish something? What should I do next month to correct it? That kind of analysis.

Moving / Reprioritizing: It's a necessity for me, because unlike a salaried job, I have to balance between my revenue-earning work and my hobbies. I do have to defer tasks often, to a different week or even a different month, all the time. The EOW and EOM updates are when I decide what I should defer to later. But the ideal is to stick to the schedule as much as possible through self-discipline and willpower.

Working notes: Each project and idea gets its own directory. I maintain current status of each project in its directory along with detailed notes, so that I can pick it right back months later. These are stored and tracked outside the above todo system. Since I review even the yearly goals everyday, everything gets done to a reasonable extent even if it's some months later than planned.

Trivial tasks: When I started off, I had just the yearly and daily todos. It's precisely because of trivial tasks - esp tasks which are one-time but critical nonetheless - that I introduced weekly and monthly todos. Anything important that takes time and requires me to allocate time goes into one of these lists. Otherwise my mind is unable to allocate time efficiently. Very trivial tasks like "have lunch" don't go anywhere, but I keep buffers in the daily todo for all such daily routine tasks.

If you are into learning stuff, you have probably heard of "deliberate practice". Reviewing tasks daily/weekly/monthly, and explicitly analyzing and planning for them is my way of "deliberate practice" for my life goals. I have tried a lot of visual tools in the past - GTD tools, Trello, Mind mapping - but two problems all of them had was 1) writing detailed analysis is not possible in the given interface and 2) they are designed as store to remember tools which means review may be possible but deliberate practice of planning is not easy.

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

#95

Post by taurath » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

TarpitCarnivore wrote: post #35

b_b wrote: post #29

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 a…

My one caution with this: It's pretty easy to OVER categorize your life and never get anything done either. I had a former co-worker who read GTD and began to impliment it for everything. It felt like he was perpetually planning and never actually doing. Additionally it became rather humorous to see how the most minute things became 'projects'. Sometimes it's worth just stepping back and observing what you're conside…

To defend GTD slightly, one of the core tenants is if it will take less than 15 minutes or so, do it now (maybe it’s 5 - I stretch it to however long it takes me to do dishes or mop the floor).

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

#96

Post by mezod » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

gomangogo wrote: post #37

mezod wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

The best way to sustain everyday.app is by making it open source and use cloudstorage (with encryption) to sync it. You don't need to make people paying $12. Great app.

Do you have any experience monetizing open source projects? Like, server costs are definitely the most negligible of all costs of running a project!

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

#97

Post by maire » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

b_b wrote: post #29

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 a…

I used to use GTD. I still use it for reactive tasks. It is not good at proactive tasks. I use evernote as a GTD repository, but I only act on it occasionally.

Since I retired my tasks are by nature proactive (since they come from me). I tend to organize by long term goals. I start a goal by defining the success criteria for that goal then each long term goal is a "project" in an outline text file. Each morning I look at my long term goals and decide what I want to make progress on today. That turns into a backlog for today.

Since one of my long term goals was to learn swift - I wrote an iphone app to parse the file for items marked "@today" and turn that into a todo list that I can carry with me. Apple made this convenient when they added an icloud file system for the iphone.

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

#98

Post by lovelearning » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #69

lovelearning wrote: post #40

4 text files that go from vague life goals down to concrete hourly tasks: - todo-year.txt : all goals for the year - todo-month.txt : track subset of annual goals to finish this month - todo-week.txt : track all monthly high-level tasks to finish this week - todo.txt : daily task plan based on weekly plan. Switch tasks every 1 hour. In a day, I plan for about 4 tasks, so each task ends up getting about 2 hours. Self-…

I don't use these tiers, but in terms of tooling simple text files is definitely the way to go.

Yup. Command-line, git and a dumb text file editor are all that I use.

But I wasn't always this way. Used to be a Windows guy in the past and used to prefer specialized GUI tools over command-line or general tools. Have tried all kinds of planning tools - GTD tools, Trello, some Kanban stuff, multiple Mind mapping tools. All of them had some minor deficiency or the other which I'd end up obsessing over, instead of doing my actual freaking work. It's taken me years to satisfy myself that git and an editor are more than enough.

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

#99

Post by j45 » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

I have experienced a handful. Of book sheet together have given me some peace and focus. Hopefully some of these might be interesting.

How to organize things is as important as balancing why the things are important.

The core book to start with is Getting Things Done by David Allen. It gets momentum going and allowed me to look up and around.

These books that have helpful to connect the productivity to trusting we're doing the right things in terms of meaning and purpose.

Set the stage:

Book 1: Mindset by Carol Dweck (are you really open to possibilities and not a fixed mindset?)

Book 2: The Power of Habit (how do you build small new skills, since are only a sum of our habits, and those habits can change)

Getting prioritized:

Book 3: Focal Point by Bryan Tracy (find and set the priorities in all areas of life)

Getting and staying organized and focused:

Book 4: Getting Things Done by David Allen (the how to get it done and stay organized and keep it all out of your head, biggest productivity book of the last 20 years)

Book 5: Deep Work by Cal Newport (regain the power of focus to get twice as kuch done.. With the same effort and no distractions)

Book 6: So good they can't ignore you by Cal Newport (now that you're going, how do you really make an impact in what you're putting your time into)

Book 7: The Miracle Morning. I'm a night owl. This book convinced me that the late night is the same thing as the super early morning, except I'm rates and have way more energy.

The order may vary for others, in hindsight I'd read them in this order, but starting with Getting Things done and working through the rest as you like is realistic too.

Happy to learn about any books you'd like to share.

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

#100

Post by lovelearning » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

MarsAscendant wrote: post #45

lovelearning wrote: post #40

4 text files that go from vague life goals down to concrete hourly tasks: - todo-year.txt : all goals for the year - todo-month.txt : track subset of annual goals to finish this month - todo-week.txt : track all monthly high-level tasks to finish this week - todo.txt : daily task plan based on weekly plan. Switch tasks every 1 hour. In a day, I plan for about 4 tasks, so each task ends up getting about 2 hours. Self-…

The tiering of goals in the way you've done it is brilliant. Do you consult upper-tier lists when making lower-tier assignments?

That is in fact the core of the idea. I suck at low-level planning. All the wishful annual life goals have to trickle down as concrete daily activity to get anywhere. My mind is excellent at building castle projects in the air and even good at high-level analysis of them using flowery language. What it sucks at is converting all that into concrete steps. That's why I have to explicitly break them down into monthly, weekly, daily, and even hourly chunks.