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To-do waves

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Re: To-do waves

#11

Post by hunter2_ »

macNchz wrote: post #5
johnnyo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, some better examples that I use on a regular basis: 1. Take out the trash on Mondays 2. Pay the credit card bill on the 5th of every month 3. Get a haircut every 5 weeks 4. Pay the water bill every 3 months, etc Having those sorts of things in my recurring To Do list are very helpful to ensure they don't get forgotten.

I made a little email/web app that makes it easy to have a shared list like this for my wife and I, it’s very barebones but I use it every day: https://www.onit.today/ I found the alternatives to be either: designed to build your life around them and therefore too complex, or simple but lacking a good mechanism to have a shared list with others.

Looks great! Right now we just use a Google sheet but I'm looking to upgrade. There's something I need that isn't obvious when comparing features of apps like this: I need the next due date of a recurring task to be a specified duration (say, a week) after I mark the previous occurrence as done, not when the previous occurrence was due.

Example: my cat's water fountain can only be in service for a week before it must get washed. So I put it out on July 1 and it's due to be washed July 8. Alarm goes off on the 8th, I take it out of service (putting a non-fountain bowl out temporarily) hopefully that day but maybe a day late, and put it in the dishwasher. Some time later (maybe July 9, 10, or 11) I finally run the dishwasher and put the fountain back into service. Next due date is a week after that.

Right now, I have to manually type the next due date into my spreadsheet. I'd rather just click a button and have an app know to set another alarm a week after the button was clicked.

So a wave that isn't strictly periodic, it has a hold phase...

One thing I'm trying now is "hey Google remind me to x in a week" at the time of putting the fountain in service, but basically I'm looking to avoid specifying the duration or due date every single time.

I find many chores to be of this type. Another example is changing the HVAC filter. I want an alarm to happen 3 months after the last change, but maybe it won't be dirty yet so I let it alarm for a while, in which case the next alarm happens 3 months after marking the last one as done, not 3 months after the last alarm started.

Re: To-do waves

#12

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Cerium wrote: post #9

My first thought here is that the composition of todo waves allows the opportunity for a human to become arbitrarily busy on a given day when the waves positively interfere. Thankfully many of these items phase lock to the circadian rhythm or enjoy some scheduling flexibility.

I thought it was going to try to actively schedule based on the opposite of that, like get your passport renewed early because you have a lot of stuff coming up next year.

Re: To-do waves

#13

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

xivzgrev wrote: post #6

This sentence “ And a week, year or longer waves like cutting nails, tanking a car, renewing a passport” I initially read that the author only cuts his nails once per year. Yuck… Then I realized he was more likely giving an example of weekly. Anyone else read it that way?

What is "tanking a car"?

Re: To-do waves

#14

Post by thenerdhead »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #13
xivzgrev wrote: post #6

This sentence “ And a week, year or longer waves like cutting nails, tanking a car, renewing a passport” I initially read that the author only cuts his nails once per year. Yuck… Then I realized he was more likely giving an example of weekly. Anyone else read it that way?

What is "tanking a car"?

filling up the gas tank with fuel.

Re: To-do waves

#15

Post by divbzero »

Cerium wrote: post #9

My first thought here is that the composition of todo waves allows the opportunity for a human to become arbitrarily busy on a given day when the waves positively interfere. Thankfully many of these items phase lock to the circadian rhythm or enjoy some scheduling flexibility.

Unfortunately the troughs of the waves are at minimum zero so we cannot benefit from negative interference to cancel out waves.

Re: To-do waves

#16

Post by divbzero »

divbzero wrote: post #15
Cerium wrote: post #9

My first thought here is that the composition of todo waves allows the opportunity for a human to become arbitrarily busy on a given day when the waves positively interfere. Thankfully many of these items phase lock to the circadian rhythm or enjoy some scheduling flexibility.

Unfortunately the troughs of the waves are at minimum zero so we cannot benefit from negative interference to cancel out waves.

Or perhaps the right mental model is to treat help from others as negative waves. When you anticipate a particularly busy “rogue wave” you arrange help with shopping, food prep, family care, etc., to cancel out some portion of that wave.

Re: To-do waves

#18

Post by amflare »

macNchz wrote: post #5
johnnyo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, some better examples that I use on a regular basis: 1. Take out the trash on Mondays 2. Pay the credit card bill on the 5th of every month 3. Get a haircut every 5 weeks 4. Pay the water bill every 3 months, etc Having those sorts of things in my recurring To Do list are very helpful to ensure they don't get forgotten.

I made a little email/web app that makes it easy to have a shared list like this for my wife and I, it’s very barebones but I use it every day: https://www.onit.today/ I found the alternatives to be either: designed to build your life around them and therefore too complex, or simple but lacking a good mechanism to have a shared list with others.

I've been looking for something like this for a long time. IS there a demo or screenshots to see what it looks like in use?

Re: To-do waves

#20

Post by hammyhavoc »

johnnyo wrote: post #4
thenerdhead wrote: post #3

It's a cool metaphor. I think the examples are a bit more of things that you just do though. I don't normally think about having to pee, it just hits me. I don't normally consider going out for ice cream a "to do", I see it as a reward for doing things on my todos. I can't tell the authors perspective on breaks though. They mention scheduling them are counterintuitive but believe they are needed for diffuse-mode thin…

Yeah, some better examples that I use on a regular basis: 1. Take out the trash on Mondays 2. Pay the credit card bill on the 5th of every month 3. Get a haircut every 5 weeks 4. Pay the water bill every 3 months, etc Having those sorts of things in my recurring To Do list are very helpful to ensure they don't get forgotten.

I'm autistic, and I have a whole category of recurring self-care stuff like haircuts, having a shave, doing some pull-ups, crunches, something to eat, that kind of thing. Without that, I wouldn't function so well. Never shared that before.
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