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Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

I've started to feel that todo apps have one major problem: they don't do the work for you. And this is why we're so obsessed with todo apps - we don't really want to do the work, we just want to play around with how we prioritize and organize the work.

In most cases, if we just got a lot of stuff done, we'd have no need for an app, because the list of stuff to do would be rather short.

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> In most cases, if we just got a lot of stuff done, we'd have no need for an app, because the list of stuff to do would be rather short.

I find quite the opposite: The more things I do, and the more productive I am, the more rapidly things get added to my todo list. It's when I'm less productive that my todo lists stay short.

It's an interesting phenomenon that (at least my) todo lists are effective sticks for the carrot in that the size of the todo list scales with productive output.

Great observation.

There's a famous quote along these lines: "If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it."

It depends strongly on the person. For some people, checking stuff off a list is a carrot, not a stick.

I think it's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinsons_law :

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

>I find quite the opposite: The more things I do, and the more productive I am, the more rapidly things get added to my todo list. It's when I'm less productive that my todo lists stay short.

this is also what I find.

Another interesting bit is that I seem to actually finish between 10% and 33% of the tasks I plan to have finished by a certain date. This percentage completed doesn't seem to vary much between the times when I get a whole lot done, and the times when I get very little done.

I mean, I think my 'level of irrational optimism' remains fairly constant. I believe myself to be between 3x and 10x better than I actually am, and while within that range my error band is pretty random, it rarely steps outside of that range, even though I have weeks where I easily accomplish 100x what I would accomplish in my worst working week.

(I'm only counting time when I'm actually attempting to be productive. It's not fair to compare my "productivity" while working to "productivity" during vacation unless you want to introduce some very difficult to quantify variables.)

> no need for an app, because the list of stuff to do would be rather short.

For me, one of the keys of a successful todo list is to keep the list short to begin with. A long todo list is too daunting, but a short one is motivating. I write them down on paper instead of using software, which I think just adds a layer of overhead.

Totally.

I write down the three highest priority things, do them. Repeat.

For me, todo lists remove the mental burden of keeping track of what I need to do in my head, and allow me to easilly shelf a new task without significant interuption to my workflow on the current task. Becuase I am at a computer for almost all of my work, my todo app is just vim, but I don't see why I wouldn't get the same benifit from a proper 'app' if I was at a job without consant access to a computer.

I like to use todo lists also for a sense of achievement. When I cross something from my list I feel i got something done, even if it was trivial , it gives me positive energy to get more done. Also I agree that when I am most productive, my list grows instead of shrinking.

Brilliant observation.

And of course, every second we twiddle with out todo application, is a second wasted, not spent doing the things on that list.

I cannot believe there is not a proper study somewhere showing that these applications waste more time than they save. Or perhaps the opposite!!!

todo app + fiverr integration?

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