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

To-Do Lists Don't Work

blogs.hbr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 132 posts

Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work

#41

Post by Karunamon »

Can we get "(for me)" added to the topic here? There's no such thing as an organizational system that works (or doesn't work) for every person out there.

I personally use Taskwarrior[1] for work (because I'm in the terminal all the time anyways), and aside from a couple of edge cases, it's the simplest and most effective thing I've found.

Our group uses a JIRA[2] instance that I've customized the heck out of to make an effective "This is what needs done, grab this if you have any spare time" system. The motto is "No ticky, no worky" - anybody doing anything work related generates a ticket for it. We've got shell aliases hooked into the web service, so anybody can just do a command like:

  ja awesomeproject 'Finish work on the gonkulator' inprogress
For home and personal, I'm a fan of Any.do[3], it's a Chrome webapp and native Android app. The Chrome app lives in a button on the top bar for easy access, the Android app stays in the notification pane and shows what you should be doing next, and it has this feature called Moment where it runs you through your pending tasks once a day, and you mark them as done, to do today, or to do later. Great way to make sure you keep visibility on stuff.

    [1]: http://taskwarrior.org
    [2]: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
    [3]: http://any.do

Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work

#42

Post by adsr »

I certainly think the idea of using a calendar instead looks more useful, as presented here. It does put you closer to actually DO what is on the list as it includes planning and time considerations. Perhaps a To-Do list is useful not to forget the things you must do, before you actually add it to a calendar. But I often find a pen and paper to be more suitable for that.

Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work

#43

Post by tifareth »

whiddershins wrote: post #26
eatmyshardz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever find yourself avoiding to add sub tasks because you simply don't want to do that thing you've been putting off?

No, because, (and this is the trick for me) adding tasks and subtasks and planning is a completely separate activity and headspace. When I am doing that, I am in planning mode and I don't imagine how much it will suck to do a task. Just plan. Then when I do, I just do.

This planning and review phase you describe is the first step in a GTD workflow.

Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work

#45

Post by chimeracoder »

darkxanthos wrote: post #37

I use Omnifocus which mixes the concepts of projects, todo lists, and calendar scheduling together into a very flexible package. I don't like that all my data is in a proprietary format but it's the only tool that's helped me get my chaotic business life under control.

> I don't like that all my data is in a proprietary format but it's the only tool that's helped me get my chaotic business life under contr

I really wish there were a good task management system that:

1) Supported GTD 2) Is cross-platform (or has an open API).

I've hacked together my own with a combination of my own scripts and the Toodledo API, but their web UI is pretty bad (and even their API is annoying to work with - look up their authentication flow and you'll see what I mean).

Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work

#47

Post by corresation »

Karunamon wrote: post #41

Can we get "(for me)" added to the topic here? There's no such thing as an organizational system that works (or doesn't work) for every person out there. I personally use Taskwarrior[1] for work (because I'm in the terminal all the time anyways), and aside from a couple of edge cases, it's the simplest and most effective thing I've found. Our group uses a JIRA[2] instance that I've customized the heck out of to make…

Can we get "(for me)" added to the topic here?

Such a disclaimer (or rather "for some people") could be added to almost every lifehack / productivity tip / work habit / fitness technique / etc.

Work at home / in the office / in the cafe / for yourself / in a team / pair programming / standing desks / morning walks / coffee brewing / IDE tools / soylent / fasting / feasting / work-life balance / pretty much everything else.

People make absolute statements of universal truth to pitch their confidence and certainty, but really it seldom applies to more than a small subset.

Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work

#48

Post by inDigiNeous »

nhebb wrote: post #5

I understand what the author is trying to say, and I've been in that situation where I've mixed small tasks with short and long term projects. I've tried a number of things over the years, but a todo list created with pencil and paper is the most effective way for me to manage my work. It is not a motivational tool. It's not a project management tool. It's simply a task tracking system with very low overhead. Everyon…

Exactly. TODO lists work very well on short term tasks. Daily programming tasks for example, that are put on a TODO list and then completed one by one for example.

Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work

#49

Post by blumkvist »

snitko wrote: post #44

I've been using http://workflowy.com for the last couple of years to organize my work and it does work.

This is how it works for me:

Just use workflowy and order your tasks in chronological order for tomorrow. 15 minutes right before bed and you will be efficient as a machine. Be explicit in your tasks, not meticulous. If your daily task has more than 2 levels or more than 5 subtasks, split it up. If it takes more than 2 hours - you probably should split it up. ymmv. And of course take the occasional breaks.

This is for people who do a very wide variety of things and also make a lot of decisions in the process. If majority of your day is in repetitive tasks, might be even counter-productive.

Also, it is not meant as a project management replacement. It's just a to-do list.

Post reply on HN