Instead of planning, do retrospectives. Start journaling. It’s not the answer you are looking for, but it’s the answer you need. Don’t focus hard on what you *will* achieve. Instead, focus on what you have achieved.
Ask HN: How do you organize your life?
41–50 of 88 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?
#42Dont't "organize" your life. Live it! you dont't organize eating, sleeping, sh tting, loving,... Did you ever forgot to eat or hug your beloved one and organize a birthday party for your wife / children / whoever? so why do you want to "organize" the other aspects of your life? The only things i need to push me forward in the important aspects of my life are values*. The values are working like a compass and pushing…
This reads like someone who doesn’t have to keep track of the house and kids. Getting appointments lined up for handymen, doctors, teachers, tutors, taxes, repairs, play dates, date dates with the significant other, etc. and somewhere in between it’s good to do the housework, eg laundry, cooking, cleaning, which means regular grocery runs.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?
#43I use a single never-ending text file for this, because I'm tired of dealing with remembering formats or apps. I've written about it here: https://jeffhuang.com/productivity_text_file/
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?
#44I'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…
I'm sorry, I think it's cool you've setup your own micro-cloud and written all of your own apps but following that up by saying that installing a few plugins in Obsidian is an attention black hole is goofy. I feel like rewriting a bunch of basic apps that are built into basically everything at this point is probably a bigger attention black hole than installing a few plugins.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?
#45Live a simpler life. Optimize for spare time. Then you don't need all these tools to organize your chaos. Periodically, I get an urge to "organize" my life but when I start writing down digital TODO lists and fill in calendars they end up gaping almost empty, so I stop. Today, if I need to do something I write it down on a post-it and put it on my desk (right now there are two post-its with four bullet points). Those…
I think this is the only correct answer. Work is chaos by design, and requires organising. If your life requires organising at similar levels then that's a second job and another source of stress.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?
#46Dont't "organize" your life. Live it! you dont't organize eating, sleeping, sh tting, loving,... Did you ever forgot to eat or hug your beloved one and organize a birthday party for your wife / children / whoever? so why do you want to "organize" the other aspects of your life? The only things i need to push me forward in the important aspects of my life are values*. The values are working like a compass and pushing…
> So go and look out for the real important values in your life. If you need "lists" or "organisation tricks" to reach goals, then, maybe, these goals are not your own goals.
Terrible advice. It's like saying, eat whatever you want. If you find yourself continually eating funnel cakes deep and deep fried turkey legs, just go with it because obviously you must be passionate about being fat. Humans are lazy. Exercise is generally good for us, but most don't have so much passion for running or lifting that we just wake up everyday and magically find ourselves in a squat rack.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?
#47Notes: A notes git repo that contains mostly Markdown files, which I write via Obsidian.md.
Action items: Github issues on that notes repo. I wrote some custom code that lets me snooze actions via Github labels and sets up certain tasks to appear automatically on a recurring schedule (e.g., replace the air filter in my house every 90 days).
This works really well for me, but sadly it is bad for collaborating on projects with less technical folks such as my wife.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?
#48Ever-growing Google Docs text files tell you everything about my life, going back to about 2007. Bank balances, payment schedules, work tasks, personal tasks, items ordered, deliveries expected, and even a couple sentences about how I felt and what happened. As you might expect, there's a simple format that is followed for each day, so that someday I could parse these files into a database of some sort. During meetings, I type non-stop taking notes into this file. If I promise someone something, it goes into the file. Because of this, I can tell you that I did 'x' on Tuesday, March 12th, around 2pm, and for that it is invaluable because if I were to rely on my grey matter for all of this, I would fall flat on my face. If I promised someone something or began a task, it keeps getting rolled over into the next day's notes until it's complete. It is extremely uncommon for things to 'slip through the cracks' as a result.
It doesn't really matter which tool you use, as long as it's predictably formatted and easily searchable. There is simply no way I could deal with the insane demands of life without relying on an external memory. Google Docs is nice because it's highly available and replicates between desktop, macbook, and iphone almost instantly, such that I can leave one device and pick up the next without losing my 'memory'. This is one feature that I find extremely valuable.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?
#49It's kind of basic and error-prone but my girl and I share a private discord server where we share pictures, put notes about upcoming events, share links when planning, store our grocery lists, etc. I also use Notion for note taking. I haven't yet found a solution that I like for setting and achieving longer term goals.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organize your life?
#50Dont't "organize" your life. Live it! you dont't organize eating, sleeping, sh tting, loving,... Did you ever forgot to eat or hug your beloved one and organize a birthday party for your wife / children / whoever? so why do you want to "organize" the other aspects of your life? The only things i need to push me forward in the important aspects of my life are values*. The values are working like a compass and pushing…
Alas, part of my life, and a part in alignment with my values that I really enjoy is "Run projects of huge complexity". As well as "have multiple hobbies" and "travel a lot"
And all the "live your life freely" advice in the world is not going to help me there.
I also have ADHD. I value the shit out of punctuality, but punctuality does not reciprocate without elaborate time management tools. And yes, I've forgotten to eat, or to hug a loved one, or to organize a birthday party.
The idea that there is "one weird trick" that'll just work for everybody is ignoring that we all live different lives. And there is value in exposing people to different approaches. But let's stop pretending that "Don't do A. Do B!" is good advice. The best we can do on this kind of advice is "here's what works for me"