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How to organize yourself as a solo founder

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Re: How to organize yourself as a solo founder

#21

Post by staticassertion »

paul_f wrote: post #20

Having tried everything, nothing works better than 5x8 yellow pads. Write down everything you need to do. Draw a line thru when done. Every few days, rebuild the list. Everything has to be on one page, or there are too many to-do's, and you can delete ones that just don't make the cut. No technology, just pen and paper.

I had one Dropbox Paper document for years called "Next Steps". It was literally just a freeform list of things I needed to get done for the project. Every day I would expand the list and cross off/ checkmark what had been done. It got pretty massive.

Now I have a company and a team so we use an issue tracker, which I find to be much much heavier but it's easier to use across multiple people.

Re: How to organize yourself as a solo founder

#22

Post by staticassertion »

urban_winter wrote: post #7

I've never found a way that I like to integrate dealing with email into a to-do list. Reading emails is a perpetual need but it is damaging to focus and I often find that it saps my energy by reminding me of all the things that are not yet done. I've tried having fixed times of the day where I always deal with emails; adding "30 minutes of email" to my task list; reading them between each switch of tasks. None of the…

Email is exhausting. I've decided that I just don't care about quick turn-around on email. It sucks, but the cost of checking email throughout the day is too high - not just in terms of time, but the psychological impact of it is surprisingly negative.

I now check it ~2x. Morning and midday. If I'm doing a back and forth I may go back to that one specific thread, but that's it.

Re: How to organize yourself as a solo founder

#23

Post by staticassertion »

TastyJhinga wrote: post #3
bdominy wrote: post #2

I use color coded Post-It notes to track my tasks. Red for high priority tasks, yellow for medium, green for low. Orange and blue for subtasks. Stick them on a whiteboard near your workspace and then move what you want to tackle into a row that acts as your queue. Finished tasks go in a stack you can watch grow.

Why not just use something like jira or trello at that point? Having to remember the color associations for subtasks physically seems a bit too much for me. Also, software is something you can access from anywhere and you don't have to be in one single place.

For me, all of those task trackers are radically slower than even a pen and paper or just a single document. Load times, the million buttons, search, etc are all worse. They're fine for teams that need to share work and make asks of other teams and prioritize etc, but for one person they're extremely inefficient.

Re: How to organize yourself as a solo founder

#25

Post by pdevr »

After using a lot of different tools, now I use a plain text file. It works for me. I move things down as I finish them. The top part always have my pending tasks in there. The file is more than ten years old now, and have been the best productivity tool for me that I started using the same approach at office as well.

I had some sticky notes at office, but now with the world having changed, I took a screenshot of all of them and manually transferred them to my text file as well. If I need to refer to a diagram or something, I just add a pointer (the path - local file system or URL) to that in my text file.

Re: How to organize yourself as a solo founder

#26

Post by dnndev »

Use text editor for the short list that must be done today/tomorrow. (These are my manager tasks)

Everything else I create tickets in our tracking system which is divided by client / project. (These are my technician tasks for the most part)

Things move fast, make sure your system works for you and not the other way around.

At times, I simply go by the idea, if I can’t retain it in memory then it’s not on my short list. Fancy to do lists seem logical but not practical. I spent my time managing a list rather than doing the tasks.

Re: How to organize yourself as a solo founder

#27

Post by dnndev »

paul_f wrote: post #20

Having tried everything, nothing works better than 5x8 yellow pads. Write down everything you need to do. Draw a line thru when done. Every few days, rebuild the list. Everything has to be on one page, or there are too many to-do's, and you can delete ones that just don't make the cut. No technology, just pen and paper.

This would be a good idea if I could read my own handwriting.

I get this works for some, but never has for me. I have never been a notebook type of person.

I love your general approach and very similar to a digital version I use.

Re: How to organize yourself as a solo founder

#28

Post by rmbyrro »

paul_f wrote: post #20

Having tried everything, nothing works better than 5x8 yellow pads. Write down everything you need to do. Draw a line thru when done. Every few days, rebuild the list. Everything has to be on one page, or there are too many to-do's, and you can delete ones that just don't make the cut. No technology, just pen and paper.

I keep trying digital tools, get excited at first, to later realize I went back to paper without even noticing the switch back... Came to the conclusion no digital tool will ever be better than paper. It's a matter of principle, not how innovative we can be in digital.

Re: How to organize yourself as a solo founder

#29

Post by mellavora »

dnndev wrote: post #27
paul_f wrote: post #20

Having tried everything, nothing works better than 5x8 yellow pads. Write down everything you need to do. Draw a line thru when done. Every few days, rebuild the list. Everything has to be on one page, or there are too many to-do's, and you can delete ones that just don't make the cut. No technology, just pen and paper.

This would be a good idea if I could read my own handwriting. I get this works for some, but never has for me. I have never been a notebook type of person. I love your general approach and very similar to a digital version I use.

You could work on improving your handwriting. You might notice other benefits.

I read about one person whose math comprehension increased dramatically when they improved their penmanship; something about a mental link between the ability to visualize the formulas in their mind and the ability to create/visualize them on paper.

Re: How to organize yourself as a solo founder

#30

Post by aetherspawn »

Microsoft Todo is great for this. It syncs between all your devices, Office365 and integrates with outlook (flagged emails become todo items).

You can make hierarchical folders and the recurring option is super handy.. I run much of my invoicing/AR/AP as just a recurring todo item.

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