We Still Don’t Get Things Done • Hacker News Board

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#121

Post by heymijo » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 12:09 AM UTC

jkhdigital wrote: post #24

I still think David Allen nailed it in Getting Things Done . Not the system necessarily, but he nailed the diagnosis of why we fail to get things done: an inability to be honest with ourselves about (1) the full scope and scale of the commitments we make, and (2) just how little time and attention we have at our disposal in meeting those commitments. Really, it’s the same sort of problem that is described in The Goal…

> Really, it’s the same sort of problem that is described in The Goal and The Phoenix Project, but on a personal level.

Can you say more about this?

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#122

Post by tchock23 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 12:23 AM UTC

Lightbody wrote: post #31

jkhdigital wrote: post #24

I still think David Allen nailed it in Getting Things Done . Not the system necessarily, but he nailed the diagnosis of why we fail to get things done: an inability to be honest with ourselves about (1) the full scope and scale of the commitments we make, and (2) just how little time and attention we have at our disposal in meeting those commitments. Really, it’s the same sort of problem that is described in The Goal…

For what it’s worth, we (Reclaim.ai - I’m quoted in the article), have a lot of ADHD customers who tell us that we help with time blocking on their calendar. In particular, the fact that we do it automatically seems to be the thing they appreciate. Edit: First time I’ve ever been downvoted into negative territory. Clearly I’ve embarrassed myself ;P Is it because of self promotion? I guess… seems weird though I/my com…

Just signed up after seeing your service mentioned in the article. Looks great so far!

Time blocking is difficult to stick to and having automation could be the solution. Sorted for iOS does automation as well, but lacks a weekly agenda view.

I’m also trying out Akiflow and have been impressed so far, but their decision to launch without syncing across devices makes me question their long term product vision.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#123

Post by moltar » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 12:30 AM UTC

throwaway803453 wrote: post #57

The YC credo is about building something people want and shipping your MVP ASAP. What I see time and time again with teams and people prelaunch is a lack of a catalyst to ship their MVP. I've met many people who have an idea and their MVP is 95% complete. Then things stall and feature creep sets in for three reasons: 1) Your MVP will, by design, have technical debt. No one likes debt. 2) Releasing means a shift from…

Ugh you just described my life for the past month. 95% there. Keep procrastinating on the ship button press (literally CodePipeline approval).

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#124

Post by joshxyz » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 12:30 AM UTC

moksly wrote: post #32

The more project management tools I have to work with, the less likely I am to work for or with a company. I have a somewhat similar stance on software architecture. Sure, I’m TOGAF certified but if you actually expect me to work with notation correct Archimare/UML/whatever and not just draw boxes on a napkin you’re either insane or sell a product with no competition. This is anecdotal of course, but after 30 years o…

Reminds me of antondd's comment on some old thread

> This brings back memories from the days of my early career (an ex-PM survivor here). I would be curious to see some data, even anecdotal, on the success of this approach. Here's some interesting statistics from the industry (not specific to software, but you can extrapolate): http://apepm.co.uk/project-management-statistics/

> In my view, traditional software project management is ineffective. I would put it somewhere between the Myers-Briggs personality test and modern day astrology.

Commendable amount of spaghetti's mentioned though.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#125

Post by OJFord » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 12:40 AM UTC

acituan wrote: post #30

Good. When we die, we will still have a giant todo list, and that’s OK. That doesn’t mean we haven’t done things, it just means the list didn’t capture the entirety of our desires and goals. Maybe the point of writing them down is mostly reflective; to contextualize them as much as possible and do the ones that we find most important by some unconscious heuristic. That means there will always be uncompleted things. A…

> , it just means the list didn’t capture the entirety of our desires and goals.

No it doesn't? It means we died before we captured the entirety of our desires and goals, whether or not they all featured on the list.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#126

Post by jkhdigital » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 1:44 AM UTC

heymijo wrote: post #121

jkhdigital wrote: post #24

I still think David Allen nailed it in Getting Things Done . Not the system necessarily, but he nailed the diagnosis of why we fail to get things done: an inability to be honest with ourselves about (1) the full scope and scale of the commitments we make, and (2) just how little time and attention we have at our disposal in meeting those commitments. Really, it’s the same sort of problem that is described in The Goal…

> Really, it’s the same sort of problem that is described in The Goal and The Phoenix Project, but on a personal level. Can you say more about this?

Both of those books are about WIP (work in progress). The Goal describes a systematic way to figure out where your production process is getting bottlenecked, and then how to alleviate the constraint and improve overall throughput. The first step is to identify the largest pile of WIP waiting for a particular process step.

The Phoenix Project extends this same methodology to IT processes, which is challenging because unlike physical production processes the workflow (and piles of WIP) are often hidden in databases and ticketing systems (which have an infinite capacity!). Furthermore, the process steps are often not even systematically documented, which makes it impossible to pin down your capacity in the first place.

Personal productivity is definitely more like the latter, since we are capable of holding quite a bit of invisible WIP in our brains.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#127

Post by AussieWog93 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #72

edoceo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the claim about "a lot of ADHD" clients. How do you even know? Did you ask?! What percent? Feels real BS to me.

"talk to your customers" is rule number 1 of just about any startup, any business even. Why would you doubt that they do this?

I would add to that: if you have a non-insignificant amount of customers, they'll talk to you!

That's how I found out my product, which was targeted mainly at younger people, was really popular amongst the older crowd.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#128

Post by jkhdigital » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 1:55 AM UTC

Lightbody wrote: post #31

jkhdigital wrote: post #24

I still think David Allen nailed it in Getting Things Done . Not the system necessarily, but he nailed the diagnosis of why we fail to get things done: an inability to be honest with ourselves about (1) the full scope and scale of the commitments we make, and (2) just how little time and attention we have at our disposal in meeting those commitments. Really, it’s the same sort of problem that is described in The Goal…

For what it’s worth, we (Reclaim.ai - I’m quoted in the article), have a lot of ADHD customers who tell us that we help with time blocking on their calendar. In particular, the fact that we do it automatically seems to be the thing they appreciate. Edit: First time I’ve ever been downvoted into negative territory. Clearly I’ve embarrassed myself ;P Is it because of self promotion? I guess… seems weird though I/my com…

This may not be helpful, but for me scheduled timeboxes are not quite the right solution. The real problem is capacity management, so the ideal solution would be something that makes it clear how much space a commitment occupies without simultaneously forcing me to decide when I will do it.

I know there are some who probably insist that I’m trying to have my cake and eat it too…

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#129

Post by jkhdigital » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 2:03 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #62

quartesixte wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit due where credit is due: these project management software companies have done a good job of convincing people they need it. I've taken to using tools that most closely mimic notepad+pen or whiteboard+marker. Increasingly I am finding that a physical whiteboard, markers, and post-its are good enough. And if you need to create backups, the image quality on any smartphone is very, very good these days. The more…

What they do is give middle management something to do. Often questionably necessary, middle management has a hard time doing something when engineers understand the product and upper management has the right balance of setting direction and entrusting decisions to the makers. So they start asking the engineers to do things and get upper management on the train of wanting reporting. Doing that with pen-and-paper engi…

I’d say that they give middle management an out, a way to make their jobs “easy” by just throwing a tool at the problem. Middle management should be doing what middle managers do in physical production processes: removing barriers, and reviewing processes for continuous improvement. For whatever reason, management science has not caught up to the ubiquity of knowledge work in the modern economy.

Re: We Still Don’t Get Things Done

#130

Post by AussieWog93 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 2:16 AM UTC

One thing that so many of these productivity apps (and "productivity hacking" in general) seem to miss is that simply doing more "productive" things doesn't make you more effective, and can in fact have the opposite effect.

Certain tasks that you undertake will have an impact that is 3 or 4 orders of magnitude more than lower-importance tasks, and when the scaling gets that extreme it's a completely valid approximation to bin a "productive" task such as "type polite email response to customer who clearly isn't interested in buying your product" in the "non-productive" category alongside "go for a walk" and "play video games".

I've spent the last year optimising one of my businesses by simply avoiding tasks that I neither enjoy nor bring in a significant amount of value and the results have been stellar. We've grown enough to the point where we've hired our first employee, and the amount of hours my wife and I are putting in since a year ago has halved.