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Ask HN: How do you organize your life?

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11–20 of 88 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?

#11
Work wise, I have started just keeping a running google doc (I guess any doc would work) and I log whatever I do. I do share it with my boss but I have found it really personally motivating and helpful as a record.

I am less worried about getting things done on schedule in my personal life. For better or worse. I block out time on my calendar sometimes or create an event on my calendar in the future. I will also sometimes schedule send an email to myself as a reminder.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?

#12
Todoist (https://todoist.com) for me :). Though wish it also had Notes, or other persistent non-task based storage as one can sometimes close out an item that was meant to be informational/lookup (such as family info, or other persistent notes). That issue aside it's still my instant go-to for adding tasks, reviewing what's next, and generally seeing how far behind I am on all my goals :)).

There are some nice self-hosted open-source alternatives/copycats (https://alternativeto.net/software/todoist/), but I've been too lazy the last few years to try and the price is generally reasonable enough that I haven't been too motivated.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?

#13

Perhaps my answer is a bit unconventional. I try to run my life around the idea of "challenges", and internal/external obstacles I need to "overcome" to get to the next stage. I try to put everything I am doing under a larger "overcome challenge" framework. When there is a concrete story I want to complete, something I wish to accomplish, it is just much easier to get going. Also, I encourage the people around me to…

Do you find it exhausting always fighting yourself? Always fighting challenges and gamifying life? Or do you thrive on completionism or achievement that requires you to constantly struggle? I’m all for accomplishments but daily “challenges” sounds exhausting. How do you balance that with time off and relaxation?

Framing is super important. Why wouldn't learning how to relax be a challenge?

Can you meditate and stay still for 5 minutes? Well, try to stay still for 15 minutes. Try to reduce number of negative thoughts in a day, etc.

It is just about finding the right type of framing the challenge for yourself.

No, I don't find the process exhausting at all. I find that I get better over time, if I struggle now, and with higher skills/capabilities, life just gets better.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?

#14
I basically don’t. For work I track in-flight items and a backlog of possible things to do next in a text file. Meetings are in the work outlook calendar. Other than that I just wing it. I’ve found anything else just takes time and doesn’t improve my success or happiness.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?

#15
Calendar for appointments but that's about it.

I try to make my life a little more free-flowing so that it doesn't feel like work.

I live with a bit more spontaneity. Text my friends out for a spontaneous dinner, go out spontaneously with wife, make spontaneous weekend trips. Life seems more fun this way.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?

#16
post #3

I think I organize my life to require less organization. Organization is a tool not a goal. What does it take to make a task self-organizing? Can I delegate organization to habit, routine, or ritual? In the past, I thought "I will sit at the computer and organize the N problems of my life." Thus I had N+1 problems. YMMV. Good luck.

Similarly, automate things in a way that doesn't really create a "maintain my automation" task, or at least minimally so. Overall simplification.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?

#18
I've being developing my own micro-cloud for the last ten years - There I've wrote my own email client, password manager, finance book, OTP, movies, music, notes, calendar, backup... and a lot of other micro apps. It works fantastic for me, and I'd recommend you to try setting up an instance of NextCloud, which can achieve similar results. My problem with org-mode, Obsidian, etc is that they are attention black holes, you focus all of your time installing plugins and configuring your workspace that by the time you're done with that you don't really feel like doing the real work. If that's your case, you might consider removing apps that hinder you ability to control your life and just use a simple, plain, gigantic markdown file and grow organically from there, with the focus being simplicity and 0 config.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?

#19
I highly recommend org-roam. I also tried and did not stick with plain Org, because it becomes unwieldy trying to maintain structure as it grows large. Org-roam minimizes the friction for inserting information, which made it much easier for me to actually use it.
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