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

71–80 of 91 posts

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#71

Post by egonschiele »

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.

It's a good idea that I might try, though I do like being able to see exactly what I did each day!

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#72

Post by egonschiele »

fastasucan wrote: post #51

>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. The problem here is that they think it forces you to have an accomplishment. Just write what you did in short form. IT can be "Was very stressed and couldn't get anything substantial done, attended the monthly developer meeting and did some work on documentation". I do this…

Unfortunately a pre-req would be me severely downgrading what I think is worth writing down as an accomplishment, or switching to writing down meaningless tasks (though that IS what the original tada list idea recommends)

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#73

Post by egonschiele »

Tade0 wrote: post #46

This is lovely, but in certain life circumstances I've found it more useful to have a to-dont-list, as in: list of things I would really like to do, but shouldn't because there are more pressing matters to attend to and I need to pace myself, otherwise things will turn ugly really quick. Example: day before Christmas eve - the last workday in this region I found myself standing in line to a car wash. There was just o…

The list has helped me plan as its forced me to cut things, and just admit I won't have time to do them. For example, I took about fifty books off my shelf and to the little free library. They've been sitting there for years.

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#74

Post by AstroJetson »

myself248 wrote: post #34

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…

I have the same system, todo become done. I also add done things that I didn’t expect/ plan to do. (Life’s curve ball). I also started tracking “what is the worst thing that happened today”. That’s added perspective that I may think I had a bad day, when in fact I got these things done and the worst thing was actually pretty minimal.

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#76

Post by alfiedotwtf »

myself248 wrote: post #34

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…

First up, make sure that the Big Ass Textfile is stored in Git (you don’t want your life’s TODO list suddenly vanish).

Now that it’s in Git, feel free to delete each DONE task.

And finally, have a cron job that on the hour does something like ‘git diff > message.txt; git commit -F message.txt’

(This was my TODO list for years until I declared TODO bankruptcy and have gone back to physical cards)

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#77

Post by alfiedotwtf »

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.

When the server goes up in smoke, you won’t be able to restore from your track record.

A simple ‘scp remote local’ once a month will save you from years of “damn… if only I had backed up”

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#78

Post by alfiedotwtf »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #77
linsomniac wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When the server goes up in smoke, you won’t be able to restore from your track record. A simple ‘scp remote local’ once a month will save you from years of “damn… if only I had backed up”

Ah. I see below you’re using rsync. Phew!

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#79

Post by metabagel »

ferngodfather wrote: post #45
ardeaver wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

> change your definition of what an accomplishment + Get out of bed before sundown

+ Spend a day above ground

Re: One year of keeping a tada list

#80

Post by [deleted] »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #76
myself248 wrote: post #34

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…

First up, make sure that the Big Ass Textfile is stored in Git (you don’t want your life’s TODO list suddenly vanish). Now that it’s in Git, feel free to delete each DONE task. And finally, have a cron job that on the hour does something like ‘git diff > message.txt; git commit -F message.txt’ (This was my TODO list for years until I declared TODO bankruptcy and have gone back to physical cards)

[deleted]
Post reply on HN