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Breaking down tasks

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Re: Breaking down tasks

#91

Post by wting »

crucialfelix wrote: post #68
chrisweekly wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent: I can't recall where I first heard "plans are worthless, but planning is essential", but there's definitely some truth in it.

Dwight Eisenhower, who also created The Matrix.

For clarification, "The Matrix" refers to the urgency vs importance decision matrix and not the movie: https://asana.com/resources/eisenhower-matrix

It's a framework to prioritize important tasks instead of falling into the agency trap, akin to prioritizing meaningful strategic tasks such as product development and tech debt instead of fighting fires.

Re: Breaking down tasks

#92

Post by nate »

Being a career long engineer, I'm not unaccustomed to breaking down huge projects into smaller things that can be parallelized, plotted in time, etc. We have to do it and get better at it.

But honestly, I think what holds most of us back is a better ability to just don't do that. Take that thing you want to make, and instead of planning out all the pieces, just make the tiniest possible thing that could possibly be of value. Using this example, just start with "Today" and the 4 buttons. Make a thing that shows your 4 buttons of exercise you will click on each day. You can probably make that today. No streaks or freezes or calendar view. Those are all great ideas, and you'll get to them. But you need momentum. And you'll probably decide you don't even like that calendar view in a few days. I think more projects need a kick in the pants of just do something small. Get it done today. See what the next task is from that point because it's probably not what you thought it ought to be during the planning phase.

This also isn't exactly easy either. It requires some thought and discipline and find the smallest thing and commit to shipping it without distraction. But it's also something good to practice at.

Re: Breaking down tasks

#93

Post by OJFord »

earth-adventure wrote: post #77
ncphillips wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never ever end up doing the actual steps as I planned to I do the GTD thing of only thinking about the _next_ action, not trying to think of every action.

Seriously asking : how? I can't cheat my brain into not automatically seeing the next steps after that and the cascading relation between the all. Within a second or less.

A related if not the same thing I've been trying to do, especially with some DIY type work, is that it doesn't matter, deal with that later, just get this done thing for now.

I.e. not somehow trick yourself into not thinking about it, but just think who knows if/when I'll actually get around to that, for now just do this. Don't worry about optimal order.

If the skirting doesn't look as great as it could because I fixed and painted the doorframe first, only painting the wall and rest of skirting later, meh who cares, if it turns out to be that noticeable maybe I'll get around to giving it all another coat; in the meantime at least I got it done, not stuck in 'analysis paralysis'.

Re: Breaking down tasks

#96

Post by alexakten »

I created tasktree.co for myself to help with this! It’s so easy to get overwhelmed when faced with a big task, and actually forcing yourself to just break it down helps a lot.

Re: Breaking down tasks

#97

Post by sanderjd »

RandomLensman wrote: post #90
sanderjd wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having people assigned to tasks, a starting point, some initial steps to follow is something that increase delivery speed in the beginning a lot. It's a balance of time spent planning against the value of the plan. Immediate-term "planning" is definitely valuable, IMO. Thinking through how some immediate work can be split up so that multiple people can make progress simultaneously, without stepping on each other's…

I think making plans/planning needs training to be good at - which in turn reduces "overplanning". Knowing what to include, discuss in which forum, what task or deliverable granularity, etc. is useful doesn't come naturally to most.

Agreed.

But actually, I kind of feel like people who have had training to get good at planning, are not the most likely people to be good at avoiding "overplanning". I think it's the same kind of incentives as how dentists have a natural bias toward recommending dental work, or chiropractors toward recommending adjustments, or programmers toward recommending writing software, or anyone toward doing a bit more of whatever it is they are trained at and good at than a totally unbiased third party might really need or want.

Maybe there's also a bit of a "midwit meme" to this (in all of these cases): inexperienced: don't do it!, some experience (midwit): do it!, extremely experienced: don't do it ... except in these cases where you really should, and include just the right amount, and be very thoughtful about the forum and who to include in the discussion, and calibrate the right level of granularity for this specific project, and ...

Re: Breaking down tasks

#98

Post by sanderjd »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #88
rapind wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make lists and break tasks in to smaller tasks, however I rarely reference these lists. They basically end up in the void. The act of making the list gets my juices flowing and reminds me of the side effects / bigger picture of my current challenge. Realizing this also helps me avoid yak shaving over list making tools, since I could care less about even saving the lists! I keep a folder of text files in any project…

Sometimes planning is more important than having a plan

I see this a lot in this thread (and have heard it a number of times before), and it sounds intuitively right to me, but could you give an example of when and why that is the case?

Re: Breaking down tasks

#99

Post by sanderjd »

nate wrote: post #92

Being a career long engineer, I'm not unaccustomed to breaking down huge projects into smaller things that can be parallelized, plotted in time, etc. We have to do it and get better at it. But honestly, I think what holds most of us back is a better ability to just don't do that. Take that thing you want to make, and instead of planning out all the pieces, just make the tiniest possible thing that could possibly be o…

I have come to think of this as "The Anna Principle" in organizing my own work:

> when faced with uncertainty, one must simply focus on doing "The Next Right Thing." [0]

This is not to trivialize it! Figuring out the next right thing to do is hard, but also the most valuable part of planning, in my view.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_Right_Thing#Synopsis

Re: Breaking down tasks

#100

Post by tinycombinator »

nate wrote: post #92

Being a career long engineer, I'm not unaccustomed to breaking down huge projects into smaller things that can be parallelized, plotted in time, etc. We have to do it and get better at it. But honestly, I think what holds most of us back is a better ability to just don't do that. Take that thing you want to make, and instead of planning out all the pieces, just make the tiniest possible thing that could possibly be o…

I find that this attitude is also great for life in general.
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