How Jeff Atwood works | Hacker News Reader

How Jeff Atwood works

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114 pointsbussetta72 comments

		Do not under any circumstances keep to-do lists or use to-do apps. 
		If you can't remember the most important things you need to do every 
		day, you should work on that. And if you can't remember something 
		you "need" to do, it's probably not worth doing in the 
		first place.

Wow. This is terrible advice. Sure it may work for some people who only have a small handful of tasks but for others who have a set of hectic projects (fix this, rewrite that, call her, email him) or even life goals (write a book, make a video game, learn to speak russian, teach daughter how to fight a bear) todo lists and goalsetting is incredibly important.

Very much agreed with you, it's astoundingly bad advice. If you have a day job and work on stuff in your spare time, I don't see how you'll end up in a better place by NOT making task lists.

Because you can work on those side projects instead of spending time managing task lists.

If you're spending significant time managing task lists, your todo system sucks, and yeah, you're probably better off tossing it out. For some of us who have problems focusing or remembering (and would otherwise waste that time), a todo list is a life saver, and if you really need it, you find or make one that works for you, and works quickly.

You're greatly overestimating the time it takes to interact with a good task management app.

Some of the other posters in this thread are spending almost an hour per day just writing and revising their todo lists before actually doing anything. That's been my experience too.

Ah. Well perhaps the todo list at that point is just another means of procrastination; you feel productive because you're playing with productivity software. A todo list won't motivate you, but it can help keep motivated people organized.

You will anyway, either in your brain on paper. Except that on paper you are more organized, you can see far and accomplish a lot with little stress.

I get too involved in the current project to focus on other projects. Anxiety used to cause a nagging feeling in the back of my head, that I'm forgetting a lot of other things I need to do. Over the years I've used OCD and depression to beat it back.

I watched my dad keep lists and lose lists and forget to read lists, when I was young. He still got the important things done (make lunch for work, fix car, goto bank, etc), because he could keep that in his head, but he had piles of side projects he couldn't work on because they weren't on the latest todo list.

Because task lists can become a task in and of themselves. It's easy to fall into the trap of constantly "optimizing" (aka bikeshedding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality) the way you manage your to-do list. You try all sorts of different ways to note and sort your tasks, different task list management applications, and so forth, in search of The Perfect Task List. And then later on you look up and realize you lost more time managing your task list than you saved by having it in the first place.

> Because task lists can become a task in and of themselves.

Pre-optimization. If they become a problem, you can fix them.

I'm turning 40 in 10 days and never in my life have I had a dairy or an a to-do list of some kind. I might scribble down a phone number once in a while on a piece of paper, but I think that's about it.

I pretty much live by the same philosophy, if I can't remember it, it probably wasn't important (to me). It might be that the "to me" is the key here. :)

Edit: Oh, forgot to mention, I run a pretty hectic web development business.

Good for you! But some of us mere mortals who work for other people and have ADD sometimes need a little something to help keep us on track.

Oh. I'm just saying. Some people don't need or want a to-do list.

However, I fully agree, Jeff Atwood "giving advice" not to use a to-do list is stupid. It might work for him, doesn't mean it works for other people. My opinion would be that it would either come natural to use a to-do list or not.

I agree. If you can't remember, it's not a priority for you and that's okay. I operate the same way and have "hectic" schedules too.

It's probably not okay if that thing you don't remember is a priority for your customers and/or your boss.

> I agree. If you can't remember, it's not a priority for you and that's okay.

Tell that to airline pilots.

>> I run a pretty hectic web development business.

and

>>I'm turning 40 in 10 days and never in my life have I had a dairy or an a to-do list of some kind.

I really feel sad you underwent so much pain for no reason, while you could have easily avoided it.

The point is pain when experienced for a long term becomes normal and doesn't feel like pain anymore. Looks like that is what happened in your case.

I agree. I've gone through times in my life where I didn't have a lot of direct responsibilities, and my job was more idea-oriented. And I discovered that not having an agenda or to-do lists was incredibly liberating.

But I've also gone through phases of my life where I would have been completely lost without a to-do list, because there are 12 different things to take care of tomorrow, and 8 the day after, etc., and they're non-negotiable, and my memory just isn't that good.

If you find yourself in a position in life where you can get away with not having to-do lists, that's fantastic, but to present this as blanket "do not under any circumstances" advice is just... idiotic.

If my list gets too long for me to hold it all in my head, I'm too busy. Whenever I make a todo list, I forget it and find it weeks later with some items completed and the rest have turned unimportant.

How many hectic projects do you (or GP) have going at once? If you have too many to remember everything you have to do for each one, either you're too busy or they're not that urgent.

If a life goal (like learning Korean or Javascript or welding) isn't important enough to re-enter your head every so often (weekly, monthly, etc), then it's not important to your life, and tracking it is just wasting your time.

I used to use my inbox as my to-do list. After looking at month-old emails, I realized I didn't actually want to do/handle those things, so I archived the emails. Now, I'll write a todo list to sort everything out on paper, relax, then delete it. I'm as productive as I've ever been.

What you describe is an inefficient system. Learning Korean, Javascript, or welding are projects, not next-actions/todos. I'd keep that on a project list I review as often or inoften as I need to, but usually once a week.

Looking for a Korean tutor, completing that Javascript tutorial, or checking to see if there are welding lessons at the local community college are proper next actions that could be on a todo list.

I suggest looking into a quality system like Getting Things Done. You're on track with some suggestions (using pen and paper to dump tasks and clear up your mind, for example), but could use some refinement.

Agree with this so much. So many people view Getting Things Done as an infomercially, buzzwordy system when it's really just a set of "best practices" for everyday thinking. You can consider it and take away whatever works for you, and it's almost guaranteed that you'll find at least one thing that improves the way you think and work every day.

In contrast, Jeff's advice is the only way he found to work effectively and, he reasons, the only way anyone in a similar profession can work effectively. In reality, you may think that having next action lists and reviews are "productivity porn" and wasted time, while others may think that they help keep your mind clear and focused. You're going to do that work of evaluating priorities and deciding what to work on anyway, so there's no harm in being honest about it, isolating it, and minimizing the context switches. There's also no harm in going Jeff's route and doing "lazy evaluation" on that meta-work, only deciding when you need to. We all think and remember differently, so the debate will never truly end.

Personally, I'm in favor of advocating the best hacks and systems that people have found, preferably with grains of salt and low buzzword count, and letting people figure out what works best for them. As coders, we're used to the luxury of strong opinions and relatively hard evidence, but that's not something that will happen here.

> Whenever I make a todo list, I forget it and find it weeks later with some items completed and the rest have turned unimportant.

I think that's the big problem, your todo lists are too big and too long. Getting Things Done would be a good thing to research.

Here's an example. This Saturday I've got to wrap up a side project. I'm planning on making Saturday a "heavy burn" day, I've got a TON to do.

Saturday morning, from 7:30am - 8:00am I start planning (aka todo list). For the first half hour I'm going to casually wake up, sip coffee and write down everything I want to accomplish IN THAT DAY. It is going to look something like this:

      *  Complete Add/Remove Users
      *  Create permissions system
      *  Create groups-in-groups
      *  Complete external log-in
      *  Dinner w/wife
      *  Park w/daughter
      *  Read Robopocalypse, have beer, alone time
      *  Play with sprite map for game (fun-side-project)
      *  Final payment to credit card
      *  Call company about tree triming prices
      *  Talk to Frank about UI changes
      *  Call parents about Thanksgiving
      *  Dog needs to be walked

This todo list is useless after Saturday. It includes some things that are part of my larger goals (spending more time by myself without a computer and reading), some high priority items (do work) and some misc things that I know will probably interrupt my day (thanksgiving plans, dog walking). It also has rewards (Dinner w/wife and Park w/daughter). The end result is to shift this around so that I can spend more time doing the four things I WANT to do that day (park, dinner, dog, book) and as little time doing the rest.

So the first thing I'm probably going to do is re-organize this list and from 8:00-8:30 take care of all the 'under 15 minute tasks'

      *  Final payment to credit card
      *  Call company about tree triming prices
      *  Talk to Frank about UI changes
      *  Call parents about Thanksgiving

Boom. Now all my possible interruptions or 'things in the back of my mind' are done. Now I can lump together the big things.

First I do these three (from 9am-2pm)

      *  Complete Add/Remove Users
      *  Create permissions system
      *  Create groups-in-groups

Then I get to do these

      *  Park w/daughter
      *  Dog needs to be walked

Wohoo! I just gave myself a goal to reach by 2pm. After that I get this

      *  Complete external log-in
      *  Read Robopocalypse, have beer, alone time
      *  Dinner w/wife

And later that evening if I still feel up to it this

      *  Play with sprite map for game (fun-side-project)

Would I do this every day? No. However this is a great way for me to maximise the days that I plan to do a ton of work while still not feeling burnt out. It means I can say by Saturday evening that I 'spent time with my wife, daughter, dog' AND 'read a book by myself' AND 'got a shit-ton of work done'.

Of course. YMMV. I don't see the need to turn todo lists into a Tabs VS Spaces debate where one side is clearly in the wrong. That's what I feel Atwood is doing, and I don't agree with it.

How long does all of that list management take on Saturday morning?

Edit: In your first hour, you spend 45 minutes writing and rewriting task lists, then spend 15 minutes doing the first tasks on your list? Instead of spending all of that time writing and rewriting the list, why not just do those first tasks? You wouldn't have needed to write and rewrite them.

I believe todo lists give a person the sensation of accomplishment without actually requiring anything get done. It's productivity porn at its worst.

> 45 minutes writing and rewriting task lists, then spend 15 minutes ....

Meh. My post was a generalization and I don't see the benefit of spending too much time (ha) arguing over the high-level time slots I put on the EXAMPLE. Maybe it's 15 minutes, maybe it is 5 minutes... really that's not all that important.

For me they are quick to do and give me a set of goals and I finish my products faster because of it. At the same time I'm hitting my long term and family goals. It's a win for me.

They don't work for you. Don't use them.

His times were examples, not generalizations, but you spend that time anyway no matter what method you choose, even if your choice is no method at all. Inevitably you will have to think about desired outcomes, next-actions to reach those goals, and priorities. Why not externalize that thinking so you only have to do it once, and batch process it for efficiency?

When you choose “no system”, you're simply deciding to keep those things to do in your head, mentally reiterate and evaluate those lists, and reprioritize them throughout the day. It's true whether you think about it in those terms or not. How that could possibly be more efficient than using an external system (pen and paper) to capture that work is beyond me.

>>How many hectic projects do you (or GP) have going at once? If you have too many to remember everything you have to do for each one, either you're too busy or they're not that urgent.

That's like saying if you can't put every bit of information on the RAM of a computer you are doing it wrong.

The brain has programmable memory and RAM. You are talking about using that RAM like a hard disk.

> "Whenever I make a todo list, I forget it and find it weeks later with some items completed and the rest have turned unimportant."

I empathize... However, with the introduction of Apple Reminders app on the Mac, and it's seamless, icloudy, automagical sync across iPhone / iPad, plus geofencing, I have found that a) my list is always "in my face" and b) it's actually proving quite effective... mostly because of "a".

This might sound like hyperbole, but I think Reminders on iOS/Mac (ok, and Evernote) is the single best thing to hit productivity in a long, long time.

Edit: I also found that having specific instructions plus context in the task item goes a long way in making lists actionable and not a chore... a la GTD.. for example: "@home - call AT&T at 555-1212 and increase broadband bandwidth" or... "@work - read rev C of PRD and send comments to Bob""

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4614676 for previous discussion of a blog post by Jeff on this exact topic.

A quote from that previous article I found very apt:

Jeff telling me I should stop using todo lists is like an [alcoholic] telling me to stop drinking. No, you should stop drinking, I should drink however much I like because I don't have a problem with it.

Different strokes for different folks. It's also funny how Atwood comes in and comments that, hey todo lists suck, but calendars with deadlines and research notebooks (catches for "someday" ideas) are okay. My next question, of course, is does he check his calendar every morning to see what to work on next ;)

It's great advice for people who have the autonomy to set their own to-do lists. If you have other people you're working for, it's difficult to say, "I couldn't remember to do it so I don't think it was worth doing."

It reminds me a lot of Mark Cuban's advice of never having a set schedule or meeting times. Great idea in theory and when you get to Atwood's or Cuban's stature it's a lot more implementable.

Atwood seems to have a penchant for stating half-baked opinions very forcefully.

Todo systems are not just for important things. They're also for mundane things. A few examples from my own:

- Get the share of that £xxx bill from a housemate.

- Every Tuesday and Friday: Move trash kerbside.

- At least weekly: Process any unopened postal mail I have sitting around.

- At least monthly: Check my online bank and scan for any unexpected transactions.

Why on earth shouldn't things like these be stored and optionally teed up by a system?

> - Every Tuesday and Friday: Move trash kerbside.

Oh crap, I forgot to do this yesterday!

The counterargument is that all of these tasks are better suited for a calendar rather than an open-ended to-do list.

If I'm managing tasks, I'd rather use a UI designed for managing tasks (whether they be scheduled/due or not).

The point is that it's easy to dismiss the usefulness of todo systems if you characterise them as a manual-append-only-bucketlists. But unless you're Doing It Wrong, or using a terrible one, that's simply not the case.

A calendar is basically a meta to-do list with reminders and deadlines.

Most people using calendars for this purpose don't realize that they are actually using to-do lists.

"Strong opinions weakly held" he says: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/strong-opinions-wea...

Between this and Atwood's "Don't learn to code", I can't find a redeeming characteristic of this guy. It seems like he gets his jollies by making people feel bad because they don't code like does or think like he does.

Fully agree. Prioritised to-do lists changed my life. There's a helpful little book, "How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life" by Alan Lakein that lays it all out. Highly recommended, although it dates back to the '70s so some of the work examples used are, er, anachronistic.

As someone constantly context-switching between a job and academia, I can't imagine how I would get by without a todo list. Mine is just a plain text file that is always open in Sublime from a Dropbox folder, but without it, I wouldn't be able to keep straight when that program in operating systems is due or what I have to do for linear algebra when I've been pairing on new story development or database setup automation all day.

Ya, Jeff's a friend but this is insanity.

"call her"??? Atwood never "calls her"! She calls Atwood! Hey and I don't mean in the Hollywood kind of way - Atwood Da Man!!!

Will you forget to write a book if you don't have it in your todo list?

I think what he means to say is to fix the root cause of bad memory, as against using to-do lists. I tend to agree. According to the book - Moonwalking with Einstein, anyone's memory can be fixed. So there's that :).

There is a reason why pilot checklists has become an airline industry standard. In a lot of situations, checklists simply do work better than anything else. "Do not under any circumstances" is hyperbole that should not be written. Without that hyperbole, OP can at least get away with saying, "airline work and Jeff Atwood's work is an apples and oranges comparison".

http://www.atchistory.org/History/checklst.htm

It's good advice if you are more of a MAKER (developer/engineer/inventor) and less of a MANAGER or LEADER (being a "software architect", "lead developer", or even just having a very complicated personal life that involves taking care of other people and solving other non-autonomous people's problems - like just having a bunch of needy kids - can turn you from a MAKER to a MANAGER even if your "job" is just to brilliantly code stuff up)

I think there's a metric, some kind of sweetspot for (brain capacity e.g. working memory times "power to focus" times mental stability)/(things to manage times how unpredictable and risky the managed things can be), after which you need to use external "crutches for your mind" ...but it's entirely your choice if you choose to live in the zone where you can do everything with your mind or you need to expand beyond it (or you might just have a very chaotic mind to begin with and need the crutches for everything).

No operating system I know of, no matter how many gigabytes of memory you have, can remember more than one copied item at a time. That's ridiculous!

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the functionality he's talking about, but hasn't KDE's Klipper (http://userbase.kde.org/Klipper) and GNOME's Glipper (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glipper) solved this problem long ago? I'm sure there are other clipboard managers for other OS'es as well.

I think he means built-in to the OS. He probably uses something like the ones you mentioned, as he claims that the "only must-have app I need is a global clipboard history application."

Yeah, I had a similar reaction. I had been using the dual Office/VS clipboard ring since back in ~2002, but I forgot that it was only for applications with Office integration and not OS-wide.

He uses Windows so I assume he doesn't know much about Linux Distros. You're correct, Klipper was the first thing I thought of as well. I assume his OS experiences are: Mac, Windows, iOS, Android judging by his info posted.

First thing I thought of was the Emacs kill-ring. Emacs has been around since the 70's, so it's not like the concept hasn't been out there for awhile.

I'm the biggest advocate for plowing through every day like a tank but even I would be incredibly handicapped without a proper framework. My system is designed to keep all tasks and tactics out of my head so I can focus on strategy, vision, and execution. Folks who think they don't need a system are lucky, foolish, not all that ambitious, or have others worrying about the big picture of their lives/ companies/ industries.

Ok- I would add "focused" to that list. If you're a 20 year old working on your first startup 100 hours a week then you may not need a to-do list for life (although you should certainly use one for your development!). For the rest of us, there is way too much that can possibly be done every day - and some framework for prioritization / tracking becomes essential.

Did the title for the submission not have enough room, or is there some other reason "Cofounder", which is what the original LifeHacker title reads, got replaced with "founder" here?

The link itself includes "founder", not "cofounder". Maybe he later updated the title...

I really hate the prolific use of the term cofounder around here. Everyone who "cofounds" a business is a "founder". Otherwise you're the "sole founder" if you honestly feel like making a big deal about it. A founder is a founder, whether there is one or many.

Exactly, nobody calls America's Founding Fathers the "Cofounding Fathers" of the nation.

But you also wouldn't call any one of them "the founder of the nation", it works because the inclusion of "fathers" already states that they are a group.

Of course you wouldn't say THE founder, you'd say A founder

Interesting how polarizing Jeff Atwoods views about to-do lists are.

I believe that to-do lists are just a symptom of a different problem:

Working on something you do not really care about. (sadly, most people have to do this)

If you cared about the product or whatever you are creating, and the communication between you and your customer/boss/team is good, your goals would be aligned (in most cases), thus making it very hard to miss a really important task.

Probably it would have been better for Jeff to give the advice to try working on stuff you really care about.

> If you cared about the product or whatever you are creating, and the communication between you and your customer/boss/team is good, your goals would be aligned (in most cases), thus making it very hard to miss a really important task.

Ugh, this irks me to no end. What if you really care about your product, but there are so many exciting things for you to work on that you simply can't keep track of them all? It's like he's got blinders on to people who don't have the best memory.

I was really disappointed after reading the article. It was far too short, and contained no useful information. Actually, what is the point of such articles anyhow?

To push their ads. These articles are perfect for sites like these and sites like LifeHacker probably make a tidy sum of money from the Reddit/HN and previously Digg crowd.

Why doesn't he at least give a nod to Trello when asked about to-do lists? Give your co-founder a plug!

Where's the bias lighting? http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/11/bias-lighting.html

Great, now I'm excited about that "awesome next big thing".

Can't find the post now (think it was on HN or Ars Technica a few months back) but I'm fairly certain "the next big thing" Jeff's working on is re-imagining how a web forum should work.

I hope he cracks it - vbulletin and friends need to die!

Jeff posted a question in the Programmers Symposium of the Ars Technica forum asking how the members there felt about forum software.

Personally, I think the ars forum works perfectly. I can't stand newsgroups, for instance...i'd be in heaven if everything were vbulletin.

But maybe Jeff has something neat up his sleave!

Hopefully. I've been looking into options for fostering a small community around a new videogame, and I hate them all. Traditional forum software is much too heavy (registration, navigation), Vanilla is just strange, a subreddit is an inappropriate format (voting and the lack of long-term threads are a turnoff), and there's really not much else.

It's something that's long overdue for a shakeup.

I heard he was working on a to-do list app.

Disappointingly uninteresting answers :(

Agreed

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