Comment by koliber | Hacker News Reader

Comment by koliber | Hacker News Reader

For the TODO list, I can share one frame of mind that I use.

I have a "now", "soon", and "later" section in my TODO list.

"Now" grows and shrinks, but never gets out of control. Things sometimes move from "now" to "soon" or "later." I am constantly working off of this list.

The "soon" section varies. Often, things get pulled into "now", when they become time sensitive. Some things stick around long enough and it becomes clear they don't need to get done soon, despite of what I thought. These move to the "later" list.

The "later" list is interesting. Most of the time time, I don't touch these things. But occasionally, I look through it, and realize I am in the mood to do one of them, and then I work on it. Or the circumstances align and the situation is just perfect to get one of those items done. Occasionally, I go through it, and find things on there that are no longer relevant, and I remove them. For other things, I put them into various "fanciful idea" lists which are noncommittal, don't weigh me down, and could serve as inspiration if a need arises.

And just for "fun" (YMMV on that!), these correspond with the basic columns on a Kanban board:

- Now = in progress

- Soon = selected for development

- Later = backlog

Occasionally I've found it useful to bring work concepts like this into my personal life.

I use Now, Soon, and Later lists too (in separate text files), but time box them to Today, This Week, and Later. Every Sunday, I review my Later list and pull items into my This Week list. Every evening, I review my This Week list and prepare tomorrow's Today list.

With this system, I can focus on Today's relevant items, knowing they are the right ones and not have to stress about future work because I know it's captured in my Later list and I won't lose it because I review the Later list every Sunday. Ideally my Today list should be empty at the end of every day and my This Week list empty at the end of every week, but unfortunately that rarely happens.

I have a similar approach, I found some kanban concepts useful to prevent queues

- board structure to aid sorting before a "commitment point", e.g. "Options/New" - Later(6 weeks) - Soon (in the next 7 days)

- Now (usually just the top or highlighted item in "soon") - Done - Closed

- Closed" to place items that are dismissed

- Work in Progress (WIP) - Limits on all columns - maximum number of items

Throughput

- average capacity: number of cards completed or closed in a typical week

- useful to keep track of: when I complete a card, I add a dot somewhere (usually on a "note card") to count it for the week, and add info when blocked by sth

- this number varies, but is a useful indicator how much I can realistically process in a week - for example, 5 items/cards

WIP (Work in progress) limits

- visualize expectations - what can realistically be achieved in this timeframe

- set per column limits - when more cards are in the column, I have to remove some or transfer them to a wishlist

- wip limits determined by average number of cards closed or done per week (throughput); e.g. "Later (WIP 20)"; "Soon" - WIP 5;

Managing Flow / preventing queues

- planning with smaller steps (could each be done in a day) to enable learning

- avoiding a situation when too many things are started but not completed

- understanding the cost of queues: nothing gets done for a long time, and then all at once (unpredictable patterns); or the value diminishes (cost of delay)

I have two piles: "Time to do something about", and "Time has done something about". Amazing how many things kind of fade out in time.

Brilliant! My other pile is called “never”. It’s my out of sight, out of mind pile. The digital cemetery where I store ideas and things that could have made sense, but now don’t. And they’re still around if I need a bit of inspiration.

I’m building an app for exactly this approach - FocusTask.app

I do this but "later" usually just always grows and grows, even though they're relevant I just delete the whole thing once a year.

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