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Todo apps are meant for robots

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Re: Todo apps are meant for robots

#91

Post by yinyang_in »

complexworld wrote: post #12

I use a Todo app every day, starting in the morning. Almost all of my tasks are recurring, well defined, and relatively short. E.g. "triage email inbox every day", "vacuum house every week on Saturday", "upper body workout every second day", "renew passport every 10 years". For me this works well, because: * I don't forget to get things done * I don't have to think about what I need to do, the app shows me a daily li…

For me calendar and remainder helps me achieve it. Having calendar for and ideal day really helps me navigate around the day.

Re: Todo apps are meant for robots

#92

Post by tobr »

rtpg wrote: post #77

Almost all Todo apps have the problem of showing you stuff that you are incapable of just seeing things you _can accomplish right now_. I think people underestimate the amount of pain that comes from, over and over again, looking at a list of things you can't do anything about at a moment X. The only TODO app that I've found get this at least 95% right is Omnifocus with its billions of settings. Though there's still…

I was thinking recently that it’s such a terrible idea to put todos in a list. A todo tends to be something that gives you a tiny bit of worry: guilt that you should have finished it already, stress that you might not be able to, etc.

By putting a dozen todos together in a list, your level of worry about that list as a whole is going to rise to the most worrisome todo. It’s poisoning the well. Now you don’t want to look at the todo list at all, because it becomes a source of anxiety, even if most of the items on the list are trivial or even enjoyable.

Re: Todo apps are meant for robots

#94

Post by spec-obs »

I've taken to relying on just my memory and then use a calendar to sketch out into blocks what I will work on for the day (just mark them as free so if someone has something important they can see those slots as available). I do this at the end of each day, ready for the next day. These then go alongside scheduled events (meetings / appointments etc). I settled on this after messing around with todo apps, todo.txt, spreadsheets, pens and paper, org mode, post it notes, etc etc.

If you just trust in your own mind, it will manage priority for you and get better the more you trust it. You rarely forget important things (they have an immediate need and make it known). Small stuff just mentally shuffles themselves to the back of the mind, if a few fall off the table, it's not going to cause any significant impact.

Doing this removes all the guilt of having big lists that need daily attention (where you feel you need a todo list to manage your todo list). This way I know I am tackling the important things, which are also what make me feel better as I know I have made an impact on my day. I am not going to start / end the day with a list of everything I have not done yet.

This feels like a much more human experience to me. As they say 'don't sweat the small stuff'

Re: Todo apps are meant for robots

#95

Post by lysium »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #9

>3. Sense of accomplishment is important but rare in the digital world. When you mark a task as done in your TODO app, it just hides it. That’s it, no reward, no sense of accomplishment (unless you make your own). I think that’s why some people like Trello or pen-and-paper TODO list: when you get something done, you can see a card moved or a text crossed out. An artifact that proves there was a task here, and now it’…

One of the features I love about the Things app: it keeps the checked todo item until the next day.

Re: Todo apps are meant for robots

#97

Post by Doches »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #9

>3. Sense of accomplishment is important but rare in the digital world. When you mark a task as done in your TODO app, it just hides it. That’s it, no reward, no sense of accomplishment (unless you make your own). I think that’s why some people like Trello or pen-and-paper TODO list: when you get something done, you can see a card moved or a text crossed out. An artifact that proves there was a task here, and now it’…

This is why I keep a done list, not a todo list! I even made a dedicated app to do so; check it out: https://donel.ist

Re: Todo apps are meant for robots

#98

Post by sershe »

rtpg wrote: post #77

Almost all Todo apps have the problem of showing you stuff that you are incapable of just seeing things you _can accomplish right now_. I think people underestimate the amount of pain that comes from, over and over again, looking at a list of things you can't do anything about at a moment X. The only TODO app that I've found get this at least 95% right is Omnifocus with its billions of settings. Though there's still…

+1 on this... My serial distraction until I finally switched to paper was writing TODO apps for myself, then abandoning them. The only one that worked well for an extended period of time would literally show you one task to do. You could do it, or choose one of the options like "cannot do for X hours" (e.g. I need to vacuum and someone else in the house is asleep, or whatever), "not enough mental energy" (it would postpone and filter out the tasks you assigned the same level of mental energy, I was going to add a feature where that is deduced automatically), etc., in which case it would show you another single task to do. You could never see more than one task.

Re: Todo apps are meant for robots

#99

Post by harryf »

spec-obs wrote: post #94

I've taken to relying on just my memory and then use a calendar to sketch out into blocks what I will work on for the day (just mark them as free so if someone has something important they can see those slots as available). I do this at the end of each day, ready for the next day. These then go alongside scheduled events (meetings / appointments etc). I settled on this after messing around with todo apps, todo.txt, s…

Have a similar approach. I finally gave up using these type of apps (or lists in general) when top of my list of TODOs became “Review all these TODOs”. Also the fact that most of the apps required I spend more time playing with the UI than pen and paper annoyed me deeply.

Since then I just keep a list of 3-5 topics in my head that are important to me at some level and that’s it. It's a list of "these are the things I actually care about".

The underlying realization is: you can't get everything done. We're probably deluded by that brief period in our lives - as a student or early in our careers- where it was actually possible to get everything done, because we were being given so little responsibility to manage. The moment you become in some way "successful", leading a team, being a parent or whatever, your TODOs will far outweigh the time you have available to get them all done. Plus anyone working in startups / digital will always work in a space where the amount of useful work that could be done vastly exceeds the available time to do them.

The answer to me is we need software that makes us "smarter" in managing what's most important - our time. One example of this to me was Google Inbox, which for a brief year or two actually made me feel like I was managing my email in a clever way, enabling me to "scale up" and not waste time on the tool. And sadly Google killed it while pretending they'd ported the "best features" to GMail...

And unfortunately there's a big problem I see in software in general. There doesn't seem to be enough money in building things that make people "smarter", truly more efficient. The money seems to be in making things addictive... so I'll stick to the list in my head.

Re: Todo apps are meant for robots

#100

Post by redisman »

yosito wrote: post #83

My todo app is a checklist in a markdown file. Every morning, I go through the file, pick 3-5 priorities for the day and stick them at the top of the list. I used to do this on paper. I don't like reoccurring tasks because if I don't manually create my priorities every day, I won't do things. If I need to be reminded to do something on a particular day (schedule my annual checkup, etc) I add an all day calendar event…

I do the same. Text editor with some tasks. I also used to do it on paper but I like being able to reshuffle the day when something inevitably comes up. In a text editor its really easy to manipulate multiple items at the same time. So much better than any app I’ve ever seen where I drag and drop and click on various plus signs and whatnot. I just alt tab my editor and write it down in a few seconds
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