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One year of keeping a tada list

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Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#61
What I want is:

A todo list that feeds into a calendar (with a high degree of flexibility) that feeds into a tada list.

I’ve been working on this casually for the better part of a year and hope to release something that is home-hostable later in 2026, once I’ve lived with it for a bit.

Like I don’t want to remember that I need to do something, I just want a time slot in my calendar that auto populates against a set of constraints, so I can go from moment to moment in a flow. I want to be able to control that todo list and my goals’ time/space constraints with natural language—not some godforsaken form that gives you carpal tunnel. And then I want to see how my progress grows and how much I’m committing to what I want to do.

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#63
post #26
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? If one of your goals is to try to relax and/or meditate more, then I feel it’s a valid list entry. It’s all a matter of perspective and personal goals, no?

Because if you read the conclusion, they say that having this list gives them more pressure.

You have missed a good opportunity to be curious, rather than judgmental. Mind the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sometimes, it takes some effort to get to the rewarding part of an activity. A little pressure is not bad when it's helping you reach your goals. Millions of people force themselves to go to the gym.

People enjoy making things with their hands. They love conveying their emotions and adding their flair. If the masters did not deter people from picking up a paintbrush, why would AI slop?

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#64

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 revisit…

For similar psychological reasons I started keeping detailed notes of everything I did at work, at a time when it felt like I wasn't making any progress anywhere. Just seeing a record of when I helped someone else fix a bug, or all the times I moved the ball just by an inch or so - it really makes a difference. If I have 50 pages of things I spent time on, I must actually be doing something !

Also helps you look back a few quarters and see whose goals you’re accomplishing - your own, or the guy next to you who is dishing everything off?

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#65
For similar reasons, I ended up sticking to a bullet journal (ish) format after I tried it ~10 years ago. I don't do long-term planning with it, but I have 1-2 weeks laid out in advance, and years of stuff logged.

It keeps a record of things done and lived. In terms of planning and task keeping, the paper format also forces me to let things fall off the list if they won't get done after all.

I also joke that I'll be the person who can actually answer if one day an investigator asks me "What were you doing on the night of November 22nd, 2019?"

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#66
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.

> have a box per week Sounds like the weekly report most of my bosses have demanded.

Thats where it started for me. Writing a couple of sentences per day meant the weekly report was easy.

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#67
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shamefully bad advice. Journaling is common to aid the desribed issue.

What I mean is, you're reinforcing a mechanism of conditional self-approval. A Sisyphean endeavor by definition! Giving yourself credit for what you've done is fine, but if it comes from a feeling of insufficiency, then at best it's symptom relief that helps you avoid the underlying issue.

Maybe the underlying issue is a low awareness of what thry actually have done?

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bro sorry your comment is sort of disproportional to my comment to the point that I'm not sure if it's AI or not, also I already have a 3rd party who can neutrally assess my views and point things out (my therapist) so im not bothering reading :broken-heart: Plus by noticing things you are doing it already makes inner critic quieter, and this is THE practice to get rid of it

> "Plus by noticing things you are doing it already makes inner critic quieter, and this is THE practice to get rid of it" This is the claim I don't believe, and wrote all that to argue the case against it. How long until you get rid of it? If the answer is "hopefully it just magically goes away in a few years" that isn't an effective method.

Whats the point of having this discussion if you just dont believe them? Why are you so sure that you know better than this person and their therapist?

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#69

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 revisit…

Markdown, I use `[ ] - task` and then once it's done I put an X in the []. It works great plus works with subtasks, subsubtasks, etc.
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