To Don't – The reverse to-do list | Hacker News Reader

To Don't – The reverse to-do list

crazymarvin.com

154 pointsscns49 comments

I have a `don't do` list and a `anti-regret` list.

The `don't do` list works well, not all the time but I am constantly reminded not to drink coke, down from many liters a day. My `anti-regret` list takes priority over my to do list, things like spend more time with the kids, again works in the majority of times.

When I read anti-regret list first, I thought it would be a list of things you already have done, that you came to the conclusion you should not regret. But what you describe sounds more useful for deciding what to do next.

Yeah, it seems like you're doing pre-mortem analysis on your conscience.

I thought it's a don't do list where you also decide you won't regret not doing it.

I’ve thought of creating a “worrybook” to jot down anxious thoughts and worries to confirm afterwards whether or not if they had any basis in reality, or were in fact irrational. So another angle of dealing with regret.

Is there any psychological basis of recording bad thoughts to disprove them, as a way to treat anxiety?

What you describe is the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). I use it personally and has helped me greatly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy

It is a very healthy thing to do. The simplest forms are getting a clicker and pushing it, every time you have a negative/self defeating thought, the other would be to put a rubber band around your wrist and let it snap every time you have one. Both approaches usually show a decrease in negativity against oneself, just by making those self deceating thoughts conscious.

Licensed psychologist here. A similar worksheet is often used in CT (cognitive therapy) to challange ones thoughts. The therapy is based on the works of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_T._Beck among others. Brief description of CT by GPT-3:

"Cognitive therapy was first developed as a treatment for depression. Beck's theory was that depressed people think the way they do because they have certain beliefs about themselves, their world, and the way the world works. Beck believed that these negative thoughts can be changed by challenging them with rational responses until the person accepts them."

Reach out to a CT (or CBT) therapist if you need guidance on how to approach the methods and have them tailored to your needs.

Why reference GPT-3? Was there no other suitable or practical source available (e.g. dictionary, encyclopedia, textbook, WebMD, etc)? Was the output accurate (first try, no edits)? I’m just curious, as I doubt the citation as a source lends credibility to content itself, or the context in which it was provided (no offense intended—- perhaps I’m in the minority here).

maybe because this is hacker news and GPT-3 is cool.

You're on to something here. ;) Being a psychologist and an engineer, AI is an intriguing subject and I'm amazed what GPT-3 can produce.

Good question! Some time ago I got the chance to see what GPT-3 knew about psychology and psychological treatment. One of the subjects I let it confabulate about happened to be Cognitive Therapy. All though not perfect in any way, the descriptions are often quite good. I think this example is actually a first shot without edits. Aaron or Judith Becks works are good references otherwise if you want actual reference. From a research perspective I would start out at the reference below.

Beck, A. T., & Dozois, D. J. (2011). Cognitive therapy: current status and future directions. Annual review of medicine, 62, 397-409.

Cool, thanks!

> I’ve thought of creating a “worrybook”

There are a few major parts to my system, the major ones being

- Daily check in

- Reflection of the previous day

- Morning journal

- Daily planner

- Don't do and Anti-regret lists

- Review of the day (including a note to my future self)

- And a habit tracker, this also tracks how I feel in the morning, and how I feel in the night.

So in regards to the "worry book", I think it is a great idea. Anxiety sucks, and being able to understand why it happens and how to deal with it is a good practice. So this is how the above works for me in regards to anxiety at a high level.

1. Daily check in: This sets me up for the day, it has a list of traits I want or do have, my `don't do` and `anti-regret` lists and some other things. So for example a trait might be, 'calm', as well as some quotes which bring me back down to reality. This also includes some tools, like meditation.

2. The reflection of the previous day: I look back at what happened the previous day, what went right/wrong and what made me happy.

3. Morning journal: How I feel when I start my day, personal goals and thought.

4. Review of the day: What went right/wrong and what made me happy, and message to my future self.

How I think this works, for a "worrybook":

1. Daily check in: helps me understand the person I want to be for example a trait might be 'Not controlled by anxiety', and I will have a tool which helps that, like 'meditation'

2. The reflection of the previous day: I get to see what was bothering me the previous day, how it affected me, what I did about it or what I didn't do about it. But it also shows me that I can make it through the day, even with "bad" things happening.

3. Morning journal, how I feel and this is where I first try to adjust my thoughts. What I can do to lessen my anxiety, if it is just panic etc. How I want to feel.

4. Review of the day: I found it always good to review. Calm my mind before sleep, document how I handled the day etc.

So summed up I have understanding of how anxiety affects me, when it has be relevant historically, how I have dealt with it, and the tools which I have to deal with it. I know a little complex though, but it works for me.

It's interesting that someone mentions CBT below, it is my understanding that it is influenced somewhat by stoic thinking, which was one of the drivers behind my system. I also read `The Daily Stoic` by Ryan Holiday daily as part of one of my tasks. All of this takes me about 30 to 45 minutes a day.

In Chinese, there are 2 words for "regret".

後悔 hòu huǐ is the regret of things I did: e.g. I regret drinking that much.

遺憾 yí hàn is the regret of things I didn't do: e.g. I regret not asking her to dance.

Which do you have more of on your anti-regret list? Spending time with kids sounds much more like 遺憾 yí hàn.

> Which do you have more of on your anti-regret list?

遺憾 yí hàn type items, my `don't do` list would be a better area for 後悔 hòu huǐ item.

The anti-regret list is forward looking, as in if I did not do these things I will/may regret it.

The don't do list is backwards looking, if I do these things then I will/may regret it.

Are the items in the list single level or do you have multilevel items too? Say you have something you don't want to do but if you did, Then followed by 'do this' or 'don't do this' for course correction.

e.g.

└── Don't Drink/

    ├── Don't call ex gf/

    │   ├── Called ex gf/

    │   │   ├── Apologize and quit the call/
    
    |   |   ├──...

I'm asking this because I'm trying to find whether it's possible to build a second-order thinking tool; Where people can submit various recipes for second/multi-order thinking. I've been tracking this on my validation platform[1].

[1] https://needgap.com/problems/263-plan-second-order-third-ord...

Singular level for me. This could be helpful though for my `anti-regret` list, as a pre-mortem.

Thanks, I guess pre-mortem strategies are by itself multi-order thinking and so it makes sense.

As someone that helped create a relatively popular task management app, I've scaled things wayyyy back personally and now mostly use Apple Reminders and Streaks (Apple ecosystem only so far).

Streaks has a great "don't do this" function for tracking habits. Recommended as a habit/recurrence tracker in general.

The name is fun because it looks like the evil alter ego of Amazin Marvin, a very comprehensive productivity app

www.amazingmarvin.com

Are you using Marvin? I considered it but it didn’t seem to have a visible community (as proxy for life expectancy).

Not the original poster but I’ve tried it a few times. Absolutely love the customizability of the methodology, but for me the interface was a bit sluggish feeling for quick entry and getting a larger overview of my tasks.

Things like page loads were quick enough, it was more that I was never _quite_ sure how to do things. It would be kind of close to other task management stuff I’d used, but just different enough to slow me down significantly and that initial and immediate drop in productivity made me look for other alternatives.

Going to second this review. I loved the feature set and approach to customization, but the calendar in specific just didn’t ‘click’ for me.

They do a lot of regular releases and are great about listening to users, so maybe someday I’ll go back.

Totally agree with both of you. The feature set is very deep and the team keeps cranking out features at speed. There is also certain "cognitive behavioral" flavor on a lot of the capabilities, which I like.

But the user interface, specially on mobile, is not the nicest and fastest and they struggle to keep it user friendly due to the overwhelming set of capabilities and possible workflows. It's like the Emacs of Productivity Apps, so Cultured Code's Things or even Todoist are much much more polished and fast.

I came back to it because it's the only app that integrates well with more than two calendars, allows for timeblocking and has habit tracking.

I've used it heavily for a couple years now. I describe it to people as tinker toys for building your ideal todo list app. There's an active official Facebook group community, if that's helpful at all: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1927874704161821

It's somewhat unfortunate that the most active user group is in Facebook, there is also a Reddit sub -not also the greatest forum but wins over FB Groups.

In the Age of Fallibility this is a must. We are pursuing the superman way, while we might be surprised we are already as good as it is possible, as we must be.

Tracking the don’ts, then realizing some of them are part of us, and this is no problem, will lead us to better humans, to understand we will never be perfect and we will always be fallible.

> while we might be surprised we are already as good as it is possible, as we must be.

Well this makes me sad.

Actually I know a therapist who told me that he considered this one of the twenty aspects of emotional maturity. He pointed me to a YouTube video made by Alain de Botton et al, quote: "You cease to believe in perfection in pretty much every area. There aren't any perfect people, perfect jobs or perfect lives. Instead, you pivot towards an appreciation of what is 'good enough'".

I have been doing a combination to do/to don't list for awhile and treat the latter like the proverbial unbreakable chain.

So in addition to tasks on my list, I have a M-F to don't list that I fill in once I've ... uh, not done that thing.

Mostly related to health, fitness and sleep. It helps me stay on track.

A code style guidelines seems like a nice don't list to me, if accompanied with examples

Smart. A list of bad habits would help, as self selecting the ones we "remember" is different from recognizing ones we do unconsciously. Most of them will be immoderate versions of habits that are probably mostly good. Short list for me of things to choose to stop doing would be, suffering, struggling, searching, judging, among others, and in the time and emotional focus just those would free up, I could do stuff like lawncare, product development, get passively better at something I enjoy, or become interested in the experiences of others. I probably won't use an app unless it provides some kind of exogenous value, but it's a nice piece of art.

The "don't take the lift" suggestion in the screenshot is excellent. This presents a daily challenge that you can feel proud of tracking.

However, I think that this is only because it is reducible to a positive item that would be better served by a todo list: - Take the stairs.

The other ones don't seem like discrete, countable challenges. Rather they're simply part of conscientious behavior. You might as well include "don't spill milk and walk away without cleaning it up" or "don't kick your dog" in there. Unless you had serious problems avoiding those actions, I don't think it's very useful.

Aren't To Don'ts counter-productive since there are 99 things you shouldn't do and like 5 things you need To Do. This is akin to using blacklist as a sysadmin instead of whitelist since there are hundreds of potentially dangerous and unwanted apps which need to be blacklisted but in reality there are 10 apps that you actually need and use which are easier to pinpoint and whitelist.

It’s not the 99 things you shouldn’t do that you wouldn’t do otherwise, it’s the 4 that you shouldn't be spending time on but are anyway.

“We’ve always done it this way” - old habits die hard, and sometimes what you decide not to do is important as what you choose to do. Identifying and marking down time wasters and energy sucks is a useful exercise.

Funny enough, I've always thinked that TODO list meant "everything else that has to be done" because TODO = all in spanish.

Interesting. Do you call it a "hagamos" list? Along those lines, calling this place "Hacer News" would be pretty fitting!

Other than those shown on the website, could you give some everyday examples to write in there? This sounds like a neat app I would install and never look at again, after 3 days. I don’t see myself, friends or colleagues avoiding unprofessional, unproductive or regrettable situations if they had looked at their To Don’t list in the morning.

Gossip, browsing social media etc

Made me smile. Personally i use Habitica though which offers penalties for bad habits too, in a playful way.

Was it inspired by fake movie trailer from Grindhouse? https://youtu.be/lttrIPDFplU

Hey, I translated your whole app to Bengali.

When will I see this reflected in the update?

... go chasing waterfalls.

lol this might actually work!

Let's start a list:

1 - Don't create websites that only show with JavaScript enabled.

2 - Don't create app icons that look like swastikas

All this time, the number 4 was a swastikas in disguise.

2 - Don't complain to others about your personal choices.

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