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Comment by kkoncevicius | Hacker News Reader

I once saw this funny take on time management by J. Blow, and now I cannot help myself but remember it every time todo-lists are mentioned [1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SW7CsUrIy4

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Lol. I don't need a todo app to remind me to work on my side projects. I need a todo app to make sure I have paid the bills to payees that refuse automated payment methods, to ensure I know the 20 or so important dates related to my kids school for things like speech dates (date that it needs to be handed in, date that the speech is done), homework, and things like tablets the dogs need to take, and tax return stuff, planning holidays, the 3 or 4 steps (that need to be done in a specific order) for car insurance renewal, 7 DIY jobs to be done around the houses ... and so on. Of course I could try to hold it all in my head and just do the thing, or whatever.

Ah, it's the "just do things" part of time management discussions. It's a good perspective to have as part of the discussion, as they too often lead to talking about time management tools more than actual doing things.

It emphasizes time measurement (track how much time you're spending actually doing the work) rather than time management (plan when you intend to do the work).

I think the measurement focus is useful as you will naturally react to the measurement and that will affect your behaviour.

But planning when you intend to do the work also means planning what you will do in what sequence (i.e. prioritization), and taking into account external constraints.

And those things are absolutely essential when you constantly have more things to do than you can finish in one day, and with interdependencies on other people's work.

Preferring "actually doing the work" on stuff that is easy to finish because that is encouraged by your measurement could be quite disasteous，if it causes you to delay more important things, or to fail to address things that block other people.

At that level I wonder if the measured time is even useful. I'd imagine myself just looking at the commited code/specs done at the end of the day and assert if it was productive or not.

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