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Comment by exline | Hacker News Reader

ToDo lists. I find that when I get bogged down for any reason, if I create a todo list of items that have to get done I'm more likely to do the items on the list. I tend to pick up momentum as I cross items off the list. Make the list a manageable size, finish it off and create a new one.

For product related tasks, getting actual users and feedback from them is a huge motivator as well.

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I don't think I'd get any work done without my todo lists. Here's what works for me:

- Make the list a manageable size. I find more than 30 or so items overwhelming.

- Never let the list run out. I add new items constantly. The last ten or so items all read 'Expand this item: (some high level feature that can be broken down)'

- Mix easy and hard items. Striking an item off the list is satisfying, so make sure that after a particularly hard item, you can breeze through two or three more.

- If you're encountering a lot of hard items, spend some time expanding then into separate line items.

- At the end of the day, don't give into that temptation to polish off the easy item at the top of the list. Otherwise you'll work your way through a couple more easy items and end up having to start the day at a hard one.

- Have a visible backlog of your completed items. It's satisfying when you feel like you aren't making progress.

- Always attack the list in order. If you find yourself needing to move items around to satisfy dependencies, go right ahead, but if you skip and item because you just don't feel like working on it, at the end of the project you'll have a whole list of items you don't feel like working on.

I've found it's one thing to make a ToDo list, but completely another thing to complete the items on it. What I've found is that there are actually (at least) two major things that get in the way of finishing up projects. The first is knowing what you need to do, which a todo list solves. But, all too often I used to stare blankly at the "todo" list, and while it was comforting to know what needed to be done (and actually quite fun to come up with these things), I'd still have the overarching feeling that "it's really going to suck doing these things, and I really don't want to do them."

The way I get over this second hump, the way I actually get myself to do things that I know need to be done, is pretty simple. I sit down and imagine how it's going to feel when I finish doing these easy tasks, and how I'm going to feel when I've conquered this list, and seen my idea through all the way. I know it's going to feel great to finish the things, so why not just do them already? The more I think about it, the more I get excited to go to work.

If your goal of completing your todo list is "I get to feel what it's like to conquer these things, to completely realize this idea or project of mine from beginning to end" as opposed to "I just need to do this drudgery," then you might find yourself being propelled by your own desire to feel good, and you might even have fun doing it.

In response to the above replies, there are good and bad ways to write to-do lists:

http://www.43folders.com/2005/09/12/building-a-smarter-to-do...

http://www.43folders.com/2005/09/13/building-a-smarter-to-do...

http://lifehacker.com/270404/the-art-of-the-doable-to+do-lis...

and my personal spin:

http://vmi.posterous.com/epic-to-dos

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