Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

One year of keeping a tada list

ducktyped.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 91 posts

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#31

Post by linsomniac »

johnfn wrote: post #30
linsomniac wrote: post #23

I've been doing a work-oriented "what I did today" list for ~25 years, and really like it. Originally it started because I needed to bill for my time, but when I went to my current job (over a decade ago) I kept doing it. In my iteration, it is a concise sentence about each thing I've worked on that day. At the end of the month I go back through and review it and write up a "Wins" list. It's surprisingly useful; I sh…

> It's surprisingly useful; I share it with my coworkers and we often consult it if we notice something has been behaving differently starting at a certain date to see what was going on then. Don't you have commit logs for this??

Not for everything, but things that I do have commit logs for it's a needle in a haystack problem of which repo the commit logs would be in. At work we have ~120 repos, at least a dozen of which I'm likely to have been in over a couple weeks. Other things are likely a ticket rather than a commit (running OS updates, switching to a new haproxy might be a commit from days or weeks earlier when done in staging but the commit log wouldn't show when it was activated in production).

It's very powerful having just a few sentences I can read about what was going on specifically on a given day.

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#32

Post by linsomniac »

dangoodmanUT wrote: post #28
linsomniac wrote: post #23

I've been doing a work-oriented "what I did today" list for ~25 years, and really like it. Originally it started because I needed to bill for my time, but when I went to my current job (over a decade ago) I kept doing it. In my iteration, it is a concise sentence about each thing I've worked on that day. At the end of the month I go back through and review it and write up a "Wins" list. It's surprisingly useful; I sh…

I’m praying you have backups. That last paragraph gives me anxiety

Well, I haven't lost them in over a decade... So I have a pretty good track record. The system it's hosted on has had at least one, maybe two hardware failures over that time. A system isn't done being set up until it has backups up and running.

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#33

Post by ardeaver »

andai wrote: post #4

> Maybe the most obvious con: a tada list forces you to have an accomplishment each day so you can write it down, and this added stress to my day. Maybe it makes more sense to have a box per week instead of per day. Or even per month! At least in my own life I've noticed that focusing on daily output tends to be demoralizing, whereas if I look back over the months I am often amazed by what has come out of me.

I can also imagine that you might need to change your definition of what an accomplishment is. I tend to think of it as something that has a measurable output, but difficult-to-measure progress towards an outcome is also something (despite what product managers might think)

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#34

Post by myself248 »

Initially I kept my ToDo in a text file and I'd just delete things when I did them. Nice clean list of what's remaining, but after a few weeks I felt AWFUL, the list grew faster than it shrank, and it felt like I never made headway.

Now I don't delete things. I put a little + at the start of the line for anything I did, a - for anything I decided not to do, and a / for anything I did partially but needs to be revisited. I write a new list each day, carrying-forward items that I feel are worth revisiting.

And what's huge is that I can scroll down and see previous lists, years worth, and read all the stuff I did. It's enormous compared to the remaining todos, and apparently that's psychologically important.

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#36

Post by GabriDaFirenze »

amelius wrote: post #21
GabriDaFirenze wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I see where you're coming from but, from personal experience, AI has not much to do with one's interest in learning how to paint or draw. I've picked up drawing again this year not only as a passion but it's something I can create with my own hands. It doesn't matter that AI can do it and can do it much better, it's that I can do it. For fun, for relaxing, for meditating, ...

> For fun, for relaxing, for meditating, ... Sure, but we're talking about a "tada list" here. Would you write about relaxing and meditation on __your__ tada list?

In today's day and age I definitely would. That's my perspective though and we don't have to have the same expectations from the tada list.

"Today I meditated through drawing" is an accomplishment to me worth my personal tada list. Might not be for everyone though, I can understand that.

Someone else was making a good point that a daily tada list might be unnecessary pressure and a weekly one feels more balanced.

To add more color though, I personally would expect this to compound into an overall tada list similar to OP. At the end of the year I could amount to a lot of drawings and notice improvements over time. But again, AI has nothing to do with it.

If we give up on personal accomplishments because "AI can do it" we would go nowhere. But that's my 2c.

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#37

Post by commandersaki »

I have had many accomplishments, and I've forgotten them all. When it comes to interviewing, I've forgotten most things or can't do easy recall that I can't even speak to them. I have no desire to change though; as long as I made those accomplishments is all that matters, it's kind of like giving gifts - I don't bother remembering what I did for whom.

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#38

Post by dotancohen »

linsomniac wrote: post #32
dangoodmanUT wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m praying you have backups. That last paragraph gives me anxiety

Well, I haven't lost them in over a decade... So I have a pretty good track record. The system it's hosted on has had at least one, maybe two hardware failures over that time. A system isn't done being set up until it has backups up and running.

...and tested.

I only had to see one machine "that was being backed up" unable to restore from backup. Wasn't mine, but was enough to teach me to test them.

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#40

Post by Etheryte »

johnfn wrote: post #30
linsomniac wrote: post #23

I've been doing a work-oriented "what I did today" list for ~25 years, and really like it. Originally it started because I needed to bill for my time, but when I went to my current job (over a decade ago) I kept doing it. In my iteration, it is a concise sentence about each thing I've worked on that day. At the end of the month I go back through and review it and write up a "Wins" list. It's surprisingly useful; I sh…

> It's surprisingly useful; I share it with my coworkers and we often consult it if we notice something has been behaving differently starting at a certain date to see what was going on then. Don't you have commit logs for this??

Commit logs are isolated and per repository. In large organizations, you're usually working with numerous services, often with different owners and split across a number of repositories. Figuring out what caused something to happen can be a fairly complicated process, especially when you don't know exactly where to start digging. Having an overview like this can be invaluable and save you a lot of time.
Post reply on HN