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I'm not being hyperbolic when I say making a todo list has literally changed my life with ADHD, and I discovered this in the dumbest way possible.

I've been more or less addicted to MMOs, especially World of Warcraft. During Shadowlands (the previous expansion) the game was so awful that I quit for the first time after playing since 2004. I could play all day, and grind for hours on end just for Number Go Up™ and Box Checked©. It had NEVER occurred to me, even with an ADHD diagnosis, that this was the primary driving factor behind my addiction.

So after I quit with the intention of becoming a software engineer I was trying to find ways to tweak my brain to feel like I was still playing. I ended up programming a daily/weekly list so I could check off items as I did them.. I then added a faux xp bar and gave myself 10xp for dailies and 30 for weeklies. Then it was on. I keep myself in check to not add random bullshit to gain xp from - but using psychological manipulative videogame tactics to keep my brain on track in everyday life has completely changed everything for me.

Throughout all of this I've also returned to videogames in the last few months with a much healthier approach, because now I get my gratification from my real world goals and my need to check off my task list is greater than my need for more pixels. It's made videogames a lot more enjoyable too not focusing on playing past the point they're fun.

Just the other day I discovered that someone made that idea commercial. It's an app called Habitica: https://habitica.com/static/home.

Complete with RPG-esque equipment as rewards, quests, pets and bosses.

> I then added a faux xp bar and gave myself 10xp for dailies and 30 for weeklies

Omg I love this! Great work, that's fun and creative :)

> When you tick the box the relief is palpable

I don't find this to be true (in my case) for repeatable tasks like chores. Sure, ticking the box may provide a little relief, but knowing that it has to be done all over again the next week, endlessly, doesn't help with finding satisfaction.

For me, for chores specifically, that sense of motivation comes from a lifetime of past failures. I walked away from a kitchen full of dishes when I moved out of my first apartment, face red in shame, and the landlord ate my deposit. Other friends of mine have had infestations, because their food messes didn't make it back to the kitchen. I saw their cleaning/extermination bills. There is a distinct fear "if I don't manage to break this down into bite-sized pieces, I will suffer XYZ embarrassing/costly consequence" which truly motivates me. And now with a child, "if I don't manage to instil this habit into this child without making it palatable and manageable..."

There are other consequences too -- in-laws induce shame. Other visitors induce shame, but if I have them every other week, the panic-clean before the arrival of in-laws is only slightly bigger than the routine-clean. And with 2 adults and a child with ADHD, messes build fast if we don't stay on top of it.

So when I say ticking the box is it's own reward... really it's the "I'm keeping the monster at bay with the stroke of a pen at the end of 10 minutes of drudgery."

Same here. Behind every neat list of boxes to tick, I see an endless array of lists stretching into the future, only terminating in the moment of my death. Ticking those boxes is like adding bricks to the wall that is burying me into the cellar.

This exchange between HN users replicates conversations my wife and I have, almost to the letter. I suffer from GAD, where she suffers from ADHD, and while our neurodivergences are actively managed, we do notice that they tend to polarize us on certain topics.

To-Do Lists is one of them. Where she sees a way to organize herself and gets pleasure from "completing" lists, I see attempts to quantify an overwhelming amount of tasks that has no conveivable end. For my part, I have learned to adopt the mindset of "work stops when I decide I am done working," while is a healthy action for me that helps prevent my anxiety from running the show (and running me down), where as that same mindset would be abhorant to my wife. The funny part is that we both maintain about the same level of productivity overall, despite the opposing methods.

I suppose the take-away I am getting at is things like To-Do lists are going to be subjective, but the markets (particularly individuals that benefit from To-Do Lists) are going to treat them like a panacea for all that ails us. I refer to this promotion as Life Hack Hype, but I don't know if anyone shares my veiw or experiences on that.

FWIW I've loved using Todo apps in the last year since I started getting medicated for ADHD, but for the past couple months tasks have been accumulating endlessly. I haven't opened my Todoist pinned tab in two weeks.

My medication is still working very well, but I've lost the drive of wanting to do things in an ordered fashion and decided to embrace my ADHD-fueled unstructured focus. I still use alarms and calendars for important stuff, I have a decent, productive daily routine, but the rest I play by ear and feel. It's exhilarating to have the focus to do things without the tyranny of the laundry list.

I got too much stuff to do already to also tick what's on my todo list.

Yeah, I can definitely see that. For me, the stress differential is between an unquantified problem vs a quantified problem. But with GAD, I can definitely see how the process of quantifying the problem could become its own problem! Really glad for you that you've found balance with your wife!

Fun fact: GAD and ADHD aren't opposites, but quite related. Meaning, you can end up suffering the symptoms of both.

FWIW, despite being more like GP's wife than GP themselves, "the process of quantifying the problem could become its own problem" is very much the case for me. It leads to some unique, hilarious (to an outside observer) ways of suffering.

It's super common to have both. It develops naturally from understanding how ADD affects you and stressing about what you might be forgetting or overlooking or whatever now. They can feed on each other. It's easy to imagine how ADD symptoms could develop from GAD.

I was born with ADD, but developed GAD in my 30s in response to living with ADD.

You are not alone! I never experience positive feelings when crossing an item off a to-do list. It feels like a slow creeping death to me.

Walling oneself into a tomb - exactly.

I mean, do you feel the same about taking a breath and the follow-up exhale?

Life must extremely stressful to those for whom every discrete thing is a countdown to death.

We're talking about the emotions related to the specific format of ticking off tasks in a to-do list. Some people in this thread say they feel a palpable relief, even joy. I feel the opposite. I don't suppose anybody feels so strongly about breathing (except maybe some yogi?).

For me, it's about the uniformity of the checkbox experience. It reduces any achiement to "just another brick in the wall". Apparently for others, the same uniformity turns the tasks into something more like a game.

At the end of a day, I like to go back and look at artifacts that resulted from my efforts. Maybe I wrote something, or drew some sketches, or at least had a productive conversation in digital format. Re-reading those outputs feels meaningful in a way that looking at ticked boxes doesn't.

(In my day job I work on video meeting recording systems, among other things. One of the projects that I currently find very motivating is to produce better artifacts from meetings, e.g. automatically created video summaries with context-relevant graphics. Maybe my own love of reviewing work artifacts is why this feels so relevant, and somebody else will find them meaningless because the act of ticking a box — "Discussed X with N" — provided the same satisfaction.)

You don't have to think about breathing.

Many people consider the day-to-day grind of a job as being akin to death; for OP and similar people, these daily tasks are the same thing

stop tickin

For me, those are two different modes of thinking. As in:

Mode 1: I've accepted that chores are something I have to do.

I have "system 2" reasons to be doing them, such as "keeps me in good standing with my spouse", "makes home stay pleasant to be in, as opposed to a biological hazard", or "not doing them will later make me question my status as an adult human being". Those are all "system 2" things though, meaning they provide approximately zero motivation at the moment when I'm attempting, or considering, to do a chore.

What works here is, using "system 2" motivation to refine my TODO list - an activity that is self-rewarding by giving me that "oh I am very smart" feeling. And then, when it's time to do something, having checkboxes to tick provide some immediate reward I can parse "in the moment". Not much, but better than the default, which is no reward at all.

Mode 2: All this is modern recreation of the Sisyphus story.

Chores are a waste of life. It's one of the biggest tragedies of humanity that we haven't yet automated away or designed away the need for maintenance work. Developing self-cleaning, self-maintaining technologies and solutions sounds like a line of work I'd like to be in.

--

The important bit of personal growth for me was to put a force field between those two modes of thinking, so that I can still process thoughts related to Mode 2, without having them interfering with my ability to do anything.

I took a queue from Seth Godin in his book 'This is Marketing' where he basically breaks it down to: People like me do things like this.

I adopted a certain baseline of living as part of my core identity. People like me keep the house clean always, and tidy mostly. People like me remove anything with an odor immediately (50% full trash but it smells? gotta go right now.)

Couple that with the 2 minute rule "if it takes less than 2 minutes do it right now" and it's really changed how I live.

If you're already doing those tasks over and over there is no point in adding them to a todo.

When I started using a todo list I was very conceptual about it "this is something that must be done, therefore it goes on the list.

But really it's more about which tasks need to be present on a list. I don't need to be reminded to eat every day, and if I do, that's the job of an alarm. On the other hand if I need to soak lentils while I make breakfast tomorrow, that might go in my todo list.

> a stressfully large quantity of small tasks to do on a deadline

This is like the ideal use-case for lists and list apps. The list has an endpoint, you can stack tasks up then knock them down. Your progress through the project is actually hill-shaped[1], not "Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill"-shaped.

[1]: https://basecamp.com/shapeup/3.4-chapter-13#work-is-like-a-h...

Haha, I figured some of this out when my son was diagnosed too. My diagnosis came a couple years later.

Lately I’ve been wanting an eink display that generates TODOs for a day based on periodical tasks and my calendar. I’d just stick it on my refrigerator I think, maybe have the option to toggle to a calendar view as well. Time and remembering tasks is such an issue in my family, it seems like it could be a huge help. Unfortunately I’d need to write that program and those displays can be super expensive — I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance.

Doing it with an old iPad would be trivial, but I don’t want my kids to have free access to an iPad on the refrigerator. Plus they burn through batteries, are a bit too obvious, and wouldn’t have the subtle grayscale appearance I’d like to have. It could be an alright way to validate the idea, at least.

> Doing it with an old iPad would be trivial, but I don’t want my kids to have free access to an iPad on the refrigerator.

Just use guided access mode and they’ll only be able to access the specific app you set it to.

Thanks for that tip! I wasn’t aware this is an option. I might be able to make that work in the short term.

In 2015 I bought a no-name touchscreen e-reader (Boyue T62) and rooted it, so it could run Android apps or display web pages. $112 shipped.

I don't know what that product scene is like these days, but that might make this kind of project more accessible.

This is why I like this site! That’s such a great idea. Here I was thinking about ordering the eink screen component and attaching it to a Pi Zero or something, printing a case for it, etc. This is a much better idea, thanks! Between your comment and another, I think I’ve got perfect short term and longer term solutions.

This is very accurate and partly while I, shameless plug here, built Nestful[0]. Nestful also utilizes periods for tasks, but takes it a bit further by trying to eliminate decision making by allowing you to just do "whatever's next".

Prioritizing a task when adding it is way less stressful than deciding which one to do just before doing it.

[0] https://nestful.app

Your shamelessness is duly noted. You cannot touch the simplicity of pen and paper. Your app works on a platform plagued by push notifications, which destroys all momentum instantaneously. You describe two points of friction in adding tasks: periods, and priority. I'm sure you have put much thought and care into these features and are justifiably proud of them. Good for you, you did a thing that you cared about.

I need task lists for the things I don't care about, that I'd rather not do. And picking up my phone at any point in that process is completely self-defeating. Having multiple options and do-dads in the task-collecting interface encourages pseudo-productivity in the form of fiddling with the list. In this case, the pen is mightier than the smartphone. If I want priorities, I have multiple colors of pen.

I'm all for whatever works for you.

Edit: In fact, you can partly use the same system with pen and paper:

https://blog.nestful.app/spontaneous-productivity/

We're all different. Personally I can't do pen and paper.

Writing with a pen makes my hand hurt, and I can't hyperlink to other information that I'll need when addressing a task or easily delegate some task to my partner, especially when travelling.

I prefer tools that get out of my way — and I think Trello is great for this — for me personally, a good electronic TODO list gives me fewer problems than strictly pen and paper would.

If you don't care about it, then pen and paper does seem to be ideal, but smartphones have a major advantage of portability.

For me, every extra object in my life is a source of stress. Something that can be lost, along with all the information, in a list with no cloud sync.

Paper is fine around the house, for non urgent things, that I'll probably remember again next time I actually see the problem I made the list entry about, which is probably a pretty big fraction of the stuff people use lists for. Perhaps I should try a paper list for that one of these days.

But if there's any chance I might want to take something outside.... cloud sync is amazing. It does majorly create a pseudo productivity trap, and a temptation to check a bullshit notification(Made a little more manageable by Keep tiles on a smart watch), and probably is not optimal for getting stuff done.

But it sure is convenient not to have an extra item to carry.

Apps have the advantage of handling lots of tasks and extra stuff. I have my chores in Todoist with various repeating schedules. I think I have almost 100 of them from do every week to once a year. I guess I could make paper lists of the different schedules and then each weekend figure out which ones need to be done, but the app does it for me.

I started carrying my phone with me while doing chores so I could more easily check off tasks. Carrying a piece of paper, or using text document like someone else mentioned, would be less immediate.

> If you don't care about it, then pen and paper does seem to be ideal, but smartphones have a major advantage of portability.

For me, apps are a non-starter because I don't trust them to not collect and sell/exploit my personal info. Even if they insist there's zero telemetry collected because they don't care what types of tasks their users most often use the app for, a change of owner/management can change that situation without notice. The last place I want something like that is in the cloud.

I just assume they all are collecting data, not much that they can use that for besides ad targeting.

I do use Diary(The one of F-Droid) synced with SyncThing for journalling at the moment, to avoid any subconscious censorship I might give myself with a cloud app, but even then, it's not like I'm doing anything super private very often (Although I recognize that there are legitimate reasons to hide things including just not liking spying)

> I just assume they all are collecting data, not much that they can use that for besides ad targeting.

That's far from the truth. Depending on how detailed your task descriptions are. Your health insurance company could track how often you do or don't check your "go to the gym" tasks and if you miss too many days an algorithm could raise your rates since you're living a unhealthy lifestyle. They won't tell you why it happened. You bill will just go up. Your future employers could buy up that data and use it when making hiring decisions. So could a landlord.

Not only are you documenting for them all the things you struggle to do without reminders, but you also give them a list of all the times you've failed. That data could easily come back to haunt you in a court room. It could be used in a custody battle or divorce to show you are undependable and irresponsible. In auto accident if your records show you repeatedly failed to perform maintenance on your car it could make you more liable.

The problem with all the data being collected about you is that you can never know what it will be used for, but you can absolutely be sure that it won't be limited to ads and it will never go away so it can be used against you for the rest of your life.

You don't have to be doing anything wrong or "secret" for the data companies collect to screw you over. Just ask this guy: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike...

You'll never know who has access to your data or what will prejudice someone against you. Best to keep as much data out of the hands of others as you can.

Your link doesn’t resolve on my iPhone in safari, literally says server cannot be found.

Thank you for letting me know. I can't replicate it -- in what country/state are you?

I think it was my local isp doing something weird, a different link was also not working I dropped off wifi and everything worked.

The first time I created a checklist in a Trello card, and then completed it … the whole list does this shimmer when you tick the last checkbox. It’s just delightful.

If you use a Kanban system with a 'Done' list and you put a party popper emoji in the title, when you drag the card to it, you get a burst of Confetti :)

Oh I totally do use trello for Kanban and I must try that next time! Thanks!

Personally I don't see the same relief when ticking a box, but I 100% get the unwritten list. If there is something I need to do that is unscheduled and undocumented, I feel it always takes up a huge portion of my thinking. Writing it down and creating a reminder forces me to at least think about when I will try to do it, and lets me forget about it till that point.

Second, having a list provides a reward structure: if you get a thing done, you get to tick a box. And then the list is shorter

It also provides unmatched satisfaction when you see a THICK stack of past todo papers in your drawer.

> unmatched satisfaction (if they were done)