71–80 of 82 posts
While not strictly (and not just) a to-do system, I am quite satisfied -so far- with the Pomodoro Technique. It enhanced my productivity considerably, and it is also an apparently sustainable todo system.
You can find out more about this at http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/
voting for plain text or pen and paper. What I've found most helpful is writing down 'predicted time required' next to each task. And then if you run over adding an additional prediction next to it. And if you run under writing how long it actually took. I quickly realized my poor time management was due to habitually underestimating the time certain types of tasks take me to complete. An additional benefit is if you…
I think paper-based is the best, which I find slightly odd given my heavy reliance on technology day to day. But it just works. I create an updated list once a week or so, then I use a highlighter to highlight my next most important tasks (2 or 3), then work through them and cross them off the list. Combined with setting my one or two most critical goals for the day, this has worked out quite well.
My most effective and sustainable todo system has, so far, been a notebook with a new page for each day. On the evening the previous day (ideally... sometimes on the morning of the current day) I look at the previous day's tasks and copy the uncompleted ones onto a new page, then add to that page as I go along. This forces me to review and eliminate tasks that I blatantly won't do (self-cleaning) and keeps track of o…
For example Ctrl-Space checks an item in a bullet list.
I know intellectually that people actually do good stuff with OmniFocus, but to me the point of keeping a to do list is to reduce friction. And OmniFocus seems about as bristly and rough a program as I've ever seen. I haven't looked at it in a while, so maybe it's gotten better, or maybe one really has to have bought into in the whole GTD mindset to grok it, but even after a week of trying to come to grips with it, I…
You can do GTD with org-mode, I heard.
I use a hosts file of ad site domains aliased to localhost. A web server on my machine redirects the default page at localhost to my to-do list on http://rememberthemilk.com . In addition, I use OpenDNS to block distracting sites, and redirect block.opendns.com to localhost, which is then redirected to my to-do list.
My most effective and sustainable todo system has, so far, been a notebook with a new page for each day. On the evening the previous day (ideally... sometimes on the morning of the current day) I look at the previous day's tasks and copy the uncompleted ones onto a new page, then add to that page as I go along. This forces me to review and eliminate tasks that I blatantly won't do (self-cleaning) and keeps track of o…
So I end up trying to manage everything in my email+tasks systems (Exchange/Outlook for work and Gmail for personal). That works somewhat well, but breaks down for a couple cases. I still prefer a paper list where I can scribble new input as well, for meetings and offline / distraction-free planning time. It's not as hard to copy from paper to email+tasks, but I never seem to get it done.