"True Do" - An idea. | Hacker News Reader

"True Do" - An idea.

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30 pointsComNik24 comments

If you are really trying to solve procrastination, you have to address the distractions.

Now, here is what I would like to see: the OFF switch. Hitting a button that would block all electronic distractions (turning off television etc) and block distracting sites (like youtube/reddit/HN) and disable distracting apps (like iPhone games) for half an hour.

This most likely will involve special outlets or plugs that can be turned on/off via wifi.

SelfControl on OSX is game-changingly good --

http://selfcontrolapp.com/

Only one piece of the puzzle, but a big one.

Off switch did not work for me because I could not switch off staring out of my window or biting my nails.

One day I watched a talk by Tim Ferris and he mentioned the so called flash diet - in order to lose weight you take a picture of every meal you eat which is supposed to make you aware of your decisions that were previously habitual or subconscious and change your behaviour.

I realized this could also work when you are trying to fight procrastination. I created a little anti-procrastination tool based on that idea: http://www.simplyeasy.cz/war-on-procrastination. It's dead simple to use... all I have to do before I start wasting my time is to press the "pause" button. To my own surprise it really works for me. Tim Ferris might be on to something.

Rescuetime does this sort of thing, blocking distracting sites http://www.rescuetime.com/tour "Block Distractions and Get Focused"

A bit off-topic, procrastination vs. focus is a very different problem (imo), but try the "Strict Pomodoro" Chrome Extension, has helped me improve quite a bit.

Don't you get interrupted while in the zone? 25 minutes is about the time you actually get deep into something and the mind can easily focus 1-2 hours on task at hand, especially if you do something interesting.

Yes, good point. I often find myself ignoring the "pause" notification. I use it more as a take-off.

Or magically sends you away from home without any of those devices.

This kind of defeats the purpose of even presenting a list. It should only display one task at a time if it only wants you to work on one task at a time.

Yup, good point.

I'm reminded of this: http://nowdothis.com/

(I believe this is a Jakob Lodwick creation.)

Yep, this is true.

Now that j2bax provided a nice solution for the "on hold" problem, you could really just show one task at a time.

I cringe a little whenever I see someone try to solve an issue with planning and productivity that's already been covered years ago by awesome systems like GTD - especially when they try to solve it with technology. I want a tool, not an infomercial-esque "solution."

To be constructive -- in order to make this useful as a tool and retain the central value-adding idea, make sure you include tags and tag filters at the very least. That's all you need to make it both simple enough for casual users and versatile enough for power users. I can't tell you how many tools I would love to try but can't because they don't have tagging or replace it with something not versatile enough (like nested lists). Foremost among those is Google Tasks.

Problem is that if all you do is expose the top project, and that takes time (for example, waiting for a long compile), you lose the ability to switch to another task.

I'm not sure if that is what you mean, but the whole list is visible. So you could see your next task and work on it in the meantime. If your highest priority task finishes, you could cross off both. But with more than a few hours of delay, it might be hard to remember what you already got done.

But this is a valid point, I'll have to think about. Thank you!

You could always just have the option to check the task off or put it in some sort of hold state with a time attached to it. When that time is up the task could become active and top most again. If your compile still isn't finished, just set another hold on it and continue working down your list. Again this requires some honesty as a user, but the most important thing is that the user knows what the purpose of the app is... If they want to game it, they could save themselves some time and just use Things or Producteev.

Yes, I think this would'nt work without some kind of honesty. This hold-state sounds like a good idea!

The example given illustrates one of the flaws of almost all todo implementations: "Study for math exam" - you can never check this off the list because it can't be discretely finished.

You said "almost". Do you know one that handles continuous tasks well?

The problem with procrastination is not the todo list software/system but the procrastinator.

Also a huge flaw of online task managers is they are rigid(just a list where you can mark things as done). Freeform task management makes organization easier.

Great point as well. But I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Freeform task management". Could you elaborate on that?

Freeform(think a piece of paper) allows having lists, random text ... on same page. Evernote is great for that( I used backpack from 37 signals before that)

I like it this way because I can have my day schedule(very few things in it), tasks list and notes(I can easy add ideas and other stuff during the day) on same place.

My productivity system is a bit more detailed and uses evernote and google apps. I am thinking to actually write a short book about this but not being native english speaker holds me back(never published a book before). Does anyone think this could be interesting?

I think it's interesting, but start with writing a blogpost about it. Even though I did'nt fully understand how your system works, but I'd like to read more.

Make it free and monetize it like all the free-to-play games do:

If you want to cross of a non-top task, you have to pay increasing amounts of (real) money, e.g. 2nd task 0.50 $, 3rd task 1$, 4th task 2$ etc.

Law of Blocking Distracting Websites: No how matter how many websites you block, you will always find one that is just as entertaining.

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