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Comment by d--b | Hacker News Reader

I don't know how to articulate it, but I could never do anything like this.

The ability to organize one's life like this is so foreign to me, it's almost like he's describing what it's like to be an octopus.

I think it may be my emotional state that I can't manage. There is absolutely no way, I could decide what I'd be doing the next day every night. The thing is my state of mind would prevent me from doing half the tasks in the list. So shit would just pile up in that text file, making me every day more nervous about things.

For what it's worth, I think I am more "normal" than the person who wrote that piece. So that's a consolation...

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If it's a consolation, I feel the same as you.

I clicked because what I have is a gigantic TODO .txt file that grows and grows and grows. I typically only look at the bottom (newest) part, typically at what fits on screen. The rest is full of things I should have done at some point and never actually did.

If I could make a suggestion, try dividing your list into two: a to-do list and a "someday, maybe" list. That's a concept from GTD that helps a lot with peace of mind.

I’ve been in this place more times than I care to count. I find taking some time to go through it to ask if these things still need to be done can help a lot.

In many cases, what was once thought to be important is no longer important or even needed/wanted; delete these things. In other cases it’s more of a nice-to-have, not something that is really needed. For these, if it’s for you or someone you like, a someday/maybe list (as another comment suggested) is good, otherwise drop it.

Once the list is shorter and current, I find it easier to get things done. When the list gets too long that I can’t bring myself to read it anymore, this is generally what I do.

I’ve also found it helpful to have a kind of “backlog” list, and then something just for what I’m going to do today. That today list needs to be short. 3 things is the max for me; some days it’s just one. If I happen to finish it all, I can look at the backlog to add something. Being realistic about what can be done in a day is really important. Getting all that other stuff out of my view helps me to stop thinking about all the stuff I’m not doing, as it’s not helpful to dwell on it.

I enter my to-do items into Google Calendar. If I can't finish them today I move them to tomorrow or another future date. Once they are done they stop moving.

The trick is that you don't actually have to do all the tasks you write down. It is still nice to have a record of what you've planned so if you ever decide to jump back on any task you have a history of what you have done and any context associated with it on hand.

A lot of my todos are something like "I found this article interesting but I don't have the current skills to really understand everything in it" or "I want to add this feature to X but I think I will wait until the new version comes out because it will be easier then" or "I want to remember this when I finally decide to do Y".

This is what my read-later list is like. I always keep adding to it, but I don’t really have any part of my life carved out to read any of it. It’s full of good intentions to learn about things or start new hobbies. I migrated it a while ago and was really disappointed to find a lot of dead links. It makes me wonder what I missed out on.

My sister is far far richer and more successful than I am. She once told me that every night the last thing she'd do was to make a mental list of things to do tomorrow. That was it. Nothing written down.

I feel there's more to the story. One thing is being organized, another is being able to execute consistently, and being organized is not a precursor to that. I am extremely smart, and productive, sometimes. Most of the times my mind jumps to random areas of interest, life happens, fight with wife/GF, parent illness, alcohol binges and I'm back to a baseline with almost no output. As if I'm sabotaging myself. Consistency is key, how you achieve it is second.

> fight with wife/GF

Life hack - you'll have fewer fights if you have Wife XOR Girlfriend, and not Wife OR Girlfriend :-)

On topic, I'm pretty much the same - my own brain sabotages me via nerd-sniping more often than any enemy ever could.

I don't really think there's anything to be done about it, TBH.

Does that mean that you don't get stuff done? Or does it mean that you just decide what to do moment by moment? If it's the latter, then why does having it written out add any more stess?

For me, NOT having stuff planned out is what's stressful and the difference in productivity is noticeable when I have some sort of to-do list/schedule vs. when I just wing it.

I think the author is trying highlight that one doesn't necessarily fancy tools. The productivity space has so many options that it's easy for one to get overwhelmed with settling on the "best" option.

My partner relies on a Leuchtturm weekly planner; my father bought into the whole Stephen Covey system; a coworker has a stack of Post-its, and I use a hodgepodge of Google Calendar (far off single events), Apple Notes (weekly tasks for work) + Reminders (medium-term todos).

The whole point is not to rely on one's (aging) memory to keep track of stuff. As long as tasks aren't falling between the cracks, keep doing what you're doing.

I agree with the parent comment, but I would phrase it as:

This article feels so foreign to me because I’m not trying to be productive. I don’t have a productively system, because I’m not.

I complete my works tasks. Those usually have lists.

After work and on the weekends, I spend time with friends and family, and do hobbies as I enjoy them.

Beyond that, I don’t try to remember things. I let stuff slip through the cracks (ok, I have a planner for birthdays). I don’t try to get things done.

For what it’s worth, if you looked at my life on the outside, you’d probably think I was “productive”. I can speak multiple languages, I make music, I play sports, and I have various programming projects going.

But I don’t do any of those things because they are productive. Every day after work, I spend an hour or two doing whatever I enjoy in a completely non-systemic manner. And I find that over a multi-year time span you actually can accomplish a great deal with this “non-system”

You don't use productivity systems for planning your leisure time and hanging out, you use them to free more time and to let the things go your way at the same time. I can compare myself to my wife, who is not able to plan anything properly, and it is fascinating. She lets thing slip through the cracks, often small things which have no big consequences, but once in a while they snowball. A recent anecdote: a cabriolet she ordered gets cancelled, because she left the order unfinished for 3 months by not checking the order status and the model is not produced anymore. All easily avoidable with a proper organization. Her life mostly runs smooth only because I (and my productivity system) keep track of all the administrative stuff, otherwise things would bite her every other day.

No disrespect, but having / performing hobbies doesn't fall under "being productive" for me. You're just spending time randomly however you see fit (and seem to be happy with the outcome). Which is a nice thing, but probably the exact opposite of what is discussed here.

Sure, if you wander around, you can see nice places. But planning a trip, because you want to see specific sights, is something different. Both are nice ways, depending on what you want from life.

I've a notes.txt file that follows me around in most jobs I do. It's more a journal than a planner. Sometimes I put TODO in, sometimes what to do when a change needs to be implemented so I don't forget. That works quite well as I can return to that later, or see what I was doing some months ago. It's in vim, which works well too for me as I'm already familiar with how to edit.

One of the popular getting things done methods was to keep your stuff in one place, at least this article keeps inline with that idea.

If it works, keep doing it.

> One of the popular getting things done methods was to keep your stuff in one place, at least this article keeps inline with that idea.

Do you extend that idea to mixing work and personal?

I find it helpful to give myself permission decide NOT to do something. The to-do list is a bunch of things that I thought were important when I wrote them down. If the next day I only do half of them, but feel those were the important ones, then I have success. If I decide that half of them aren't worth doing, the doing those would be failure.

The goal of the list isn't to beat you up, but just a tool to make sure that at the end of the day you did the things that were important to you and YOU get to decide what that means.

Tony Robbins has a todo/project planning system called RPM. The training for it is hours and hours long, and the maintenance of it is also crazy. I wouldn’t recommend anyone use it verbatim, it’s just too much. That being said…

It did bring up the concept you mention. It basically had a person set their goal, then write down everything they could do to get there. From there you pick the ones that will get you the most bang for the buck. And when you hit your goal, you’re done. If that means it only took 5 tasks out of 47 possible, great. Goal achieved, trash the rest of the tasks and move on.

I think it may be the kind of work that you do too. It seems his work is well suited to his system. He can manage his own tasks, and the actual complexity of the work is stored in other systems and documents (like research papers).

The issue about productivity tools is that they target two categories of people:

- those that like to obsess over productivity tools instead of doing work

- those that share the same brain structure as the author's

If you are neither of those, have ADHD, OCD or any other brain variety, most advice on the matter is worthless at best. The only way out is find how your brain operates, and what works for you. There is no silver bullet.

ime it's a journey of knowing yourself. If you adopt this person's workflow it won't work for you, but if you try something similar, start small and gradually add more organization, you might end up with something that works

Anyone, I mean anyone can write a simple to do list.

Surely when you go to bed at night or wake up in the morning you have in your mind what it is you want or need to do that day.

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