To-Do Lists Don't Work
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To-Do Lists Don't Work
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Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#2Does anyone know of any free software that allows you to manage and visualize tasks in the manner advocated in the article?
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#3Todo lists work great! They may not work for everybody but I wouldn't know how to get through the day without my lists.
I use them pretty much like an OS would schedule tasks to avoid the pitfalls mentioned in the article. If a task is 'runnable' it will get its share because I go round-robin along the lists without preference. All this boils down to is some common sense and self discipline.
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#4Does anyone know of any free software that allows you to manage and visualize tasks in the manner advocated in the article?
I may be reading the article incorrectly, but I feel like this could be accomplished with any calendar software (Outlook, Google Calendar, et c.)
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#5I understand what the author is trying to say, and I've been in that situation where I've mixed small tasks with short and long term projects. I've tried a number of things over the years, but a todo list created with pencil and paper is the most effective way for me to manage my work. It is not a motivational tool. It's not a project management tool. It's simply a task tracking system with very low overhead. Everyone's different, but todo lists do work for me if the items are scoped properly and prioritized.
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#6I totally agree with the problems Daniel is mentioning. After being increasingly frustrated with most solutions available, we created an iOS app that attempts to solve exactly those problems. You tell the app how long a tasks will take, when it needs to be done and how important it is. Our app then selects the tasks with the highest priority for you every day. It's called Finido: www.finido-app.com
I am curious what you guys think! Is it a solution to the problems described by Daniel?
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#7Does anyone know of any free software that allows you to manage and visualize tasks in the manner advocated in the article?
It's not free but you could try finid-app.com.
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#8Does anyone know of any free software that allows you to manage and visualize tasks in the manner advocated in the article?
I may be reading the article incorrectly, but I feel like this could be accomplished with any calendar software (Outlook, Google Calendar, et c.)
This is what I've started doing. I have a few boring and long tasks that don't have any urgency but do need to be done from time to time, and they kept getting dropped, for the reasons outlined in this article.
At the suggestion of a coworker I've started scheduling meetings on my calendar to block out time to deal with them, and so far it's working very well.
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#9I have never seen someone successfully guess at how long tasks will take and use that as a method of planning. At some point you are dropping tasks off, or adding them to your day which means you are still working with some prioritization system. Save your calendar for time-critical events/tasks, everything else is a list, hopefully prioritized.
Re: To-Do Lists Don't Work
#10I understand what the author is trying to say, and I've been in that situation where I've mixed small tasks with short and long term projects. I've tried a number of things over the years, but a todo list created with pencil and paper is the most effective way for me to manage my work. It is not a motivational tool. It's not a project management tool. It's simply a task tracking system with very low overhead. Everyon…
I do a mix between a pencil and paper todo and a written one. I wrote in OneNote (that enables you to write multicolumns lists), print it, and they add things with the pencil.
I never found a practical software to handle the complexities (whatever they are) of ToDo lists.