Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 291 posts

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

#171

Post by orblivion »

elliotec wrote: post #168
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’m really very surprised that so many people recommend GTD. I absolutely hated the book. It felt like he was trying to sell the book for half of it. The techniques are very outdated and manual. It requires a huge amount of categorization to the point of way too much. I tried it, and really strongly do not recommend it in any way. It’s like Org Mode in emacs. Feels like most people just recommend it because they boug…

Ditto, plus I feel like it sort of poisoned my thinking on task management. I'm obsessive by nature, and I think it made me more obsessive.

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

#172

Post by crabl »

I wrote my own task management application that I use to organize long-term goals (and different aspects of my life) into high-level categories (represented by sections on the page like “work” vs. “home” vs. “personal”), and more granular categories (represented by cards of tasks) as they become more well-defined, or if i want to group tasks into a “project”. I can break cards into tasks and schedule them within the same UI. The important distinction between this and most “GTD” systems is that I schedule at a much less granular level (days) than most systems and I can very easily move tasks around between “scheduled” and “unscheduled” states while maintaining a link to their corresponding category. The system is extremely adaptable because it’s not very prescriptive. I tweeted about it here: https://twitter.com/crabl/status/1073248575612542976?s=20

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

#174

Post by acuozzo »

burtonator wrote: post #170

I've been working on a project for the last 4-6 months around managing your books: https://getpolarized.io/ You guys loved it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219960 ... but I'm sure not all of you have seen it yet. Basically you can keep all your books and web pages in one central repository, tag them, flag them or archive them and read them while keeping track of your reading. It also supports highlights, an…

Have you considered a web app version?

I move around quite a bit and often don't have access to a PC on which I can install software.

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

#176

Post by MarsAscendant »

matwood wrote: post #163
MarsAscendant wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it's difficult to not see yourself as having when is everpresent in many aspects of your daily life. I want to socialize, but it's difficult. I want to work out, but it's really difficult. I want to finish the projects I start, but it's almost impossible after a while. Not because I want it to be – so that, perhaps, I could escape the strain of putting in the effort – but because it just is . That's the s…

I'll answer both your questions here: > Were you raised with discipline in mind – as in, were your parents/guardians promoting discipline within you? Did you get to it yourself? Good questions. I think I was raised with less forced discipline than most kids. I say forced because there was necessary discipline. My family didn't have much so when I was old enough to want money to buy things that meant finding a job. Wi…

> It took months one time for me to add 5# to my dead lift.

Holy cow! I would've quit after a few days of no progress.

Thank you for this reply. The workout felt good. I did a little bit of push-ups, squats, and plank, and it was a major boost already. Last time I exercised was a week ago.

How did you start? Was it the school PE? your parents' example?

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

#177

Post by uglycoyote »

It's Windows-only but I like AbstractSpoon's todo list https://abstractspoon.weebly.com/

It's a basically like a tree-style notepad, which makes it easy to break larger goals down in to subtasks or dependencies

For each tree node that you click on, you can add notes in the textbox on the right.

I have a similar process to what some other people mentioned they do with text files -- divide it up into several lists (top level tree nodes) to separate short term goal (daily) from medium term or longer goals (stuff I might get to next week or next month)

This software has been around a long time and the author has packed a ton of features in there, so there are a lot of different ways it could be used, but I really like it for just simple hierarchical notekeeping for tasks.

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

#178

Post by MarsAscendant »

lovelearning wrote: post #164
MarsAscendant wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks a lot for the answer. Do you have a routine to (re)visit your plans and see if you're on the right track? Do you even have a concept of the wrong track under this system? How does your work time, according to the `todo`, fare against leisure time? Is it similarly scheduled, or does it come whenever the work hours have been accomplished? Do you ever miss your goals during the hours of work? What do you do if th…

Revisiting: Yes, all the time. The yearly plan would be framed at the start of the year, but new opportunities and personal ideas arise quite often and unexpectedly. If something can help me achieve my life goals better, the entire planning cascade gets reprioritized from that point on. I have done things like defer personal projects, drop ideas that turned out to be impractical after prototyping (an example of a wro…

> Leisure time is very much part of the daily plan. I put tasks like jogging, workout, reading, going out in all my plans.

This kind of discipline sounds impressive. (I don't think I can follow something quite so meticulous: it'll probably confuse me.)

How do you fill out a `todo`? Are they different for each category? are they mostly similar? under the same template?

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

#179

Post by steelframe »

pbreit wrote: post #138
lovelearning wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are plain text files that I sync using a git repo on my private server. I don't need to travel much, but I do switch between 3 machines regularly, which means I have to sync them up often. I use git command line.

That seems _much_ more convoluted than a synced notes app. Worth the effort?

The elegance of any given tool or language doesn't matter. What matters is what you as a user are motivated to use to solve the problem.

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

#180

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

ff_ wrote: post #139
pqdbr wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide a template for you trello board?

I'm also following a GTD-like approach (and I strongly second the recommendation on the book) My Trello board has the following columns: - MAYBE - for things that I'll maybe do - BACKLOG - for things that I decided I'll do at some point - WEEK - for things that I'll do this week (limit: 8 items) - TODAY - for things I'll do today (limit: 5 items) - DONE - move things here once done Once a week I do a review session w…

Hmm,I hadn’t thought of a week/day in Trello. It’s an interesting idea, but having a les productive week seems like it really screws things up by forcing moving back to Maybe and Backlog while you plan out your week. But i see a possible benifit in that.

I wouldn’t do that to my collaborative work board, but for a personal board that seems interesting.

Post reply on HN