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Calendar, Not Todos (2018)

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Re: Calendar, Not Todos (2018)

#31
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL throwaway bank accounts are a thing.

To be honest, it’s a bit of overkill. The protection afforded here is against creditors with poor technical expertise or perhaps a computer error. Many stories of creditors auto withdrawing more than what was authorized. If a creditor was supposed to be paid $100, but somehow they withdrew $10,000. I’ll be out of that money for an unspecified moment of time. By having a minimally funded bank account, that withdrawal…

ok that makes sense. Where I live some banks charge 5€ a month for a normal banking account so you'd not want too many of these.

Re: Calendar, Not Todos (2018)

#32

This is the essential principle behind Getting Things Done . If you’ve got to do something, and it takes more than 90 seconds, book time for it. If you need someone else’s input, schedule a time to check in with them for their inputs if they don’t get back to you by X time. Been using this for years and it has worked really well for me.

90 seconds?? Is that negotiable? Because that sounds to me like a stupidly short time.

Oh well, "sorry, 90 seconds have passed, I need to go, if you want to have longer conversations with me, better make an appointment"

Re: Calendar, Not Todos (2018)

#33

Calendar doesn't work for me and since my ADHD diagnoses I know why -- I need a constant rotating set of micro and macro lists to barely keep some perspective of more than 2 days from now and get shit done. Moving everything to a calendar immediately becomes background ignore noise for me and it's even worse because it comes from that bothersome box the phone

The best system I have, as someone with ADHD, is keeping a notebook with a handwritten todo list.

All I have to do in a week is make sure to finish the todos I write down.

That’s it.

I use the calendar for meetings and things I want my phone to remind me about, but most everything is in a handwritten todo list that I keep visible on my desk at all times.

Re: Calendar, Not Todos (2018)

#34

This is the essential principle behind Getting Things Done . If you’ve got to do something, and it takes more than 90 seconds, book time for it. If you need someone else’s input, schedule a time to check in with them for their inputs if they don’t get back to you by X time. Been using this for years and it has worked really well for me.

90 seconds?? Is that negotiable? Because that sounds to me like a stupidly short time.

Keep in mind that figure came from someone whose idea of work is reading and responding to emails for a large period of the day.

My personal threshold is whether or not I need to make an ITIL description of what I'm doing. If I do, I'm reserving time for it.

Re: Calendar, Not Todos (2018)

#35
If one's Calendar is so scheduled like the one seen in the picture in the article, one need re-think their life. I've also moved to Calendar quite a while back but my target is to have as much free time each day to push and pull things around.

No more dependent on tools but learn the ideas/patterns from a bunch of them. I still use the Native macOS Apps as my triad - Calendar, Notes, and Reminder.

I do have a running list, in plain-text (Markdown), of "May Do Them". I realize quite a lot of them falls of or gets done on its own.

My inspirations and way of thinking which I still remember on the top of my head, these days, are;

- Think in terms of The Eisenhower Method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_management#The_Eisenhower...

- Push/pull around based on priority and I found a nice visualization on Show HN https://nautilus-omnibus.web.app

- Every week of my Calendar is fitted kinda like TeuxDeux, though I do the manual weekly chore of pushing around the task https://teuxdeux.com Here ToDos that do not need to be timed goes up on the top of the day and I just pushed them around when done. If something needs a time, I put it at the right time to block it to no conflict with others, etc.

- I also use my faithful Paper Notebook, and start backward from the last pages as list of ToDo that I have not calendared. Perhaps something I need to do quickly, which I remember while writing but do not want to distract. Add a checkbox in front of each line, and tick them off or strikethrough them.

- If I'm on the Notes app, then I just follow what I do above but on Notes (it has checklist and stuffs).

- Finally, I'm testing with some sort of help from an assistant. I'm tinkering with macOS's Reminders and it has become pretty powerful these days.

Re: Calendar, Not Todos (2018)

#36
post #26

I have replaced my calendar with todos. But not to the extent of this author. I don’t fill it with junk — “watching game of thrones” (wtf), but it’s filled with items that generally have a due date. - due date for water bill - due date for credit card bill Then it’s repeated monthly. I have my creditors setup to auto withdraw from a throwaway bank account (I only keep it funded with the amount needed to pay my bills)…

I think the Game of Thrones type entries still are calendar entries to block time for personal events and not really To-Dos necessarily. I know plenty of people who block their calendars for personal time.

Re: Calendar, Not Todos (2018)

#37

This is the essential principle behind Getting Things Done . If you’ve got to do something, and it takes more than 90 seconds, book time for it. If you need someone else’s input, schedule a time to check in with them for their inputs if they don’t get back to you by X time. Been using this for years and it has worked really well for me.

this is completely the opposite of what GTD recommends. Calendar entries are only date and/or date-time specific actions or events. Everything else goes into a Next Actions list.

Re: Calendar, Not Todos (2018)

#38

This is the essential principle behind Getting Things Done . If you’ve got to do something, and it takes more than 90 seconds, book time for it. If you need someone else’s input, schedule a time to check in with them for their inputs if they don’t get back to you by X time. Been using this for years and it has worked really well for me.

90 seconds?? Is that negotiable? Because that sounds to me like a stupidly short time.

Its negotiable and its 2min, not 90 seconds. The general idea is, if you have a really short and quick action (and you are certain it is short and quick), then its better to do it right away than to put it on a list to do later. The "management" time taken to write it down and pick it up again later is not worth the effort.

Re: Calendar, Not Todos (2018)

#39

Feels very alien to me. I'm a dad. Life is built around the children's calendar

Yeah, the kid's calendar is very much fixed. I don't have sick leave that I can use in order to not take care of my kid for the day. Work is infinitely more flexible in that way.

Re: Calendar, Not Todos (2018)

#40
I've started putting personal items into my calendar, and find it does help, but my philosophy isn't really one of time management. Rather, it's one of giving my personal life the same level of importance my work life gets.

Work puts lots of items on my calendar -- recurring weekly meetings, kick off meetings, daily syncs, etc. And there's things I want to do, eg go to the gym, practice guitar, etc. I resisted putting the latter sort of thing on, because honestly I'm not a huge calendar person by default. Or todo person. I find it stressful and overwhelming. But I shifted my thinking to seeing the calendar not as a todo list, but as a visualization of things I believe are important. In that view, then giving my gym time a regular slot and putting it on the calendar gives it equal billing with all those work entries.

I've found this helpful and it has made me feel better about my calendar in general. It's not time management, or even commitments, but visible prioritization, with myself included as someone I prioritize.

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