> Daniel Markovitz is the president of TimeBack Management
To-Do Lists Don't Work
81–90 of 132 posts
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#82I'm using rememberthemilk, so far it has been work well with me, 1577 tasks completed and counting...
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#83The first reason given for why to-do lists don't work is "the Paradox of Choice". Alas, the studies claiming to measure a Paradox of Choice didn't replicate and related followup studies have found roughly no effect of additional options on the ability to choose. In a great many contexts, people really like having lots of options - it makes it easier to find the exact thing they want. Maybe to-do lists is one of those.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/print/2013/08/more-is-mo...
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#84Of all of these objections, only "heterogenous priority" and "Lack of commitment devices" are unsolved by using a hierarchical to-do list.
Paradox of choice? Group your tasks into categories so that you can't see the whole list at once.
Heterogenous complexity? Divide your tasks into subtasks so that everything is ultimately broken down into roughly equal sized chunks.
Lack of context? Again, organize everything into sublists so that you do have context. Put notes under the item if you need even more context.
Heterogeneous priority? This is just not a problem with to-do lists in the first place. You have a reminder there, so take care of it before it becomes a problem. If you need another tool in addition to make sure you actually get it done, that is not an indictment of to-do lists' inherent ineffectiveness.
As for the lack of commitment devices, this is again not some fatal blow to to-do lists. To-do lists are not going to magically solve all of your problems. You will need other tools and you will need to establish good habits as well.
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#85This is just focusing on the list as an ends to itself. I have little doubt that a list is not capable of "working." However, the among the many different processes of creating and organizing a list, there are probably jewels that help a ton of people. Oddly, these processes will be widely different for many different people that all have similar artifacts. This is why some people will say "to-do lists work for me" while someone with almost an exact replica list will say "it just wasted my time."
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#86Can 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…
(I think) This is similar to how you could preface nearly any statement you make anywhere with "I think". My instinct is to qualify everything and I often have to go back and delete the qualification because it pointlessly weakens every sentence. Either that or I notice it after I've already written and cringe at re-reading it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6457261). (I think) It is usually better to let your readers decide which statements are subjective and which are objective.
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#87I've been working on a tool (https://then.io) that solves all of these problems with the same effort that a todo list requires. Your tasks are scheduled between your calendar events and within the spans of time you set for them to be executed. They are ordered so that all of your due dates are met, with padding for mistakes.
Paradox of choice, lack of context, lack of commitment devices, and heterogeneous complexity are all solved by the nature of then.io. I would argue that priority doesn't matter, only due dates do. If you have too many tasks to finish before a due date, then you need to make the decision of which due date to push back.
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#88When your list comprises items of varying priorities, you tend to take care of the “A” priorities and let the “C” priorities lie fallow…until it becomes an “A” priority itself. I had to re-read this three times to be sure I was getting it... his contention is that sometimes a "C" priority is really more important than an "A" priority??? The entire point of prioritization is that you do the most important stuff first,…
I had to reread it several times as well before I finally found a charitable interpretation. What he's saying is that with a to-do list, it's easy to just get all of the high priority stuff out of the way, and then when all you have is low priority stuff, just to dick around for the rest of the day.
On the one hand, there's some validity to that point; most people can't actually take care of every low priority item on a long term to-do list immediately without burning out. Balancing that with still taking care of the low priority items before they become crises can be difficult.
On the other hand, taking care of the A priorities and then ignoring the C priorities altogether is simply doing it wrong. The author suggests putting everything on a calendar instead of using to-do lists. I think this is dumb reasoning. There's nothing stopping you from using both.
Put everything on the to-do list. Get your high priority stuff out of the way, and then put the low priority stuff (or the stuff you have an ugh field around) on your calendar. This is way more efficient, and leverages the quickness of the to-do list to prevent you from accidentally forgetting something entirely.
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#89I have friends that swear by the calendar, but it doesn't work for me at all. I tend to think in terms of dependencies - my plans and goals are basically one big DAG. What's nice though is that you only have to focus on the nodes that don't have edges pointing to them. I even use software for it; my life is basically a graph.
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#90I have friends that swear by the calendar, but it doesn't work for me at all. I tend to think in terms of dependencies - my plans and goals are basically one big DAG. What's nice though is that you only have to focus on the nodes that don't have edges pointing to them. I even use software for it; my life is basically a graph.
Could you share with us what you use? I often feel the same way. Thanks.