Most time management is rubbish | Hacker News Reader

Most time management is rubbish

thesimpledollar.com

71 pointsoscardelben25 comments

Overall, I agree that time management does not work for everyone in the same way. I certainly hate Outlook yelling at me 10 times a day about doing X and attending Y. Thankfully, I am in a position where I am not obligated to live by Outlook and can choose my own system.

I wrote a super simple webapp http://untodos.com/ (mostly for myself) that is pretty much the opposite of every time/schedule management app out there. I don't care about the preciseness of the tasks, I care about the priority. Inside my mind, I can't visualize 4:15pm-5:45pm Friday next week. The only time horizons my mind intuitively understands are today, soon, and whenever. My app and now my life is designed around that principle. After years of being burdened with feeling stressed and overworked, I think I finally have a handle on my busy schedule now and I know my stress is much lower.

My biggest gripe with traditional time management method is that you lose sight of the big picture and only concentrate on the small urgencies. We forget the important due to the urgent. If writing a book is one of your life goals, where does it fit on a calendar? I know where it fits on mine, in the "whenever" section. Once a day, I go over my "today", "soon" and "whenever" sections and move things around as I deem necessary.

I feel my view of managing my time is more encompassing than compartmentalizing. I am one person, I don't want "buy groceries" on a separate list from "meet clients" because both happen within hours of each other anyway. My life is one life, why have separate types of calendars and events. I thought deeply about what actually matters to me and realized that all I care about a task is whether it is "work/chore" or "fun/relaxing." As long as I have a bunch of fun tasks interspersed between my regular chore todos, I can manage my time well.

I guess the key lesson about time management is that you have to know yourself and figure out what works best for you. For some, it's Outlook, for some it's GCal synced with iPhone using RememberTheMilk app merged with iCal feeds from your fridge. And for some like me, it's just a no-deadline, no-reminder list of tasks with varying priorities. Find what works for you and grow with it. And if something doesn't work, don't blame yourself and personalize the stress as being caused by your inefficiencies but rather seek a system that fits your personality.

Untodos was kinda fun.

Neat little app. I like the simplicity. Haven't quite figured out how the personality quirks/fun factor stuff fits into it all yet though.

Off topic: Oddly enough, I looked at the info about you and have actually run into your site before through your other project Sched. Cool personal page. I actually emailed yesterday regarding the Developer API on there to see if we could use it on our music festival site. Hope to hear back!

The moods/quirks aren't hooked into the tasks yet. The only one that's sort of active is the "stress" one that alerts you, depending on your stress-handling-ability, when you have too many "not fun" tasks with respect to "fun" tasks. My goal is to make the rest of the quirks gel with your personality and tasks and make simple but unobtrusive suggestions/recommendations. Like if you are a major procrastinator, the more you push down a task, the darker it's color gets.

> My biggest gripe with traditional time management method is that you lose sight of the big picture and only concentrate on the small urgencies.

The Stephen Covey's method ("7 habits" fame) specifically deals with this issue. I highly recommend you to read the book "First Things First", but basically it's about scheduling the big stuff first (literally blocking chunks of time in the calendar), and only deal with the today/soon/whenever tasks on the remaining time. It's not as simple as that, you need to read the book to actually apply it effectively, but I can tell you that I've been following it at least for the past 5 years and it has been extremely effective for me.

Untodos is remarkably charming and friendly. I especially like how it teaches you to use it, sort of like Portal. I've already moved all my todo stuff over to it.

Does it have an API? Being able to use it easily from a cell phone app would make it perfect, and I've been looking for a project to learn the Android SDK.

No API yet. I haven't even publicized the app much other than linking to it in a few discussions like this. I guess it's still a work in progress and will be for quite some time, mainly because I'm still figuring out little tweaks that make it work better for me as a user.

If you really want an API or even a secure RSS feed, let me know and I'll see if I can set something up.

Your "work/chore/business", "fun/relaxing/pleasure" dichotomy seems to be universal. I can look at any task on my to-do list and instantly put it in one of those buckets. Probably anyone with a to-do list can.

Why is this?! Assuming this ability is universal (and not just something chime and I are good at:), there must be an innate psychological reason. Possibly even a "simple" reason.

I will venture a guess: real or imagined self-threat is always associated with failure to complete a "work" task. This is never true for an individual "play" task.

Thoughts?

My method of dividing the tasks into two buckets is very simple. Is it fun? If it takes me more than 5 seconds to answer that question, it's not fun. Fun is easy to categorize. So the complement of fun is thus easy to categorize too.

The reason I break it down into two is because of how I look at tasks with respect to stress. Nearly every task either adds (even if slightly) to my stress or relieves it. Very few are on the border and if they are on the border, I'd say they add to my stress just because they're not actually relieving it. My goal is to mix it all up in a healthy balance that best suits my personality.

I may not have posed my question clearly.

You say: "Nearly every task either adds ... to my stress or relieves it." My question is: why does this seems to be true for everyone?

The answer is not necessarily related to energy or time expenditure. For me, playing consecutive games of intense full-court basketball is fun/relaxing/play.

I love the principle of Today/Soon/Whenever. Your app is a brilliant idea, and I reckon it will gel well with how my brain works.

I'm going to build something simple around this idea for our office.

I find David Allen's "Getting Things Done" to be an excellent system for managing tasks.

I've been using GTD for the past four years and I can honestly say it has really improved my handling of time and tasks.

Additionally, it has really really reduced my stress levels because I know I haven't forgotten anything and I never miss anything important.

I've tried a to implement GTD a few times but am never able to stick with it - Its an interesting system and the only one that I ever tried to implement.

I called David Allen's company to see how much the 'coach' would cost so that a couple of my colleagues and I could get started, but it was way too high for me to consider.

I always revert back to moleskine & 3x5 notecards.

I tried implementing GTD but it didn't stick either. However, there are tons of useful things you can pick up just by reading GTD-the-book, going through some of the methods and seeing what clicks with you. For me the two-minute-rule and concept of breaking a task down into actionable steps really changed the way I do things.

Another thing I picked up from GTD was 43 folders - although I don't use it as gospel, the concept of sticking things that don't have to be done yet away in a folder for when they _do_ need to be done saves me so much brain-bandwidth (I use RTM to manage this).

I recommend the book to everyone, really; even if you don't end up a GTD-lifehacker, I'm pretty sure you'll find a few things that work.

I use EMacs heavily to mantain my GTD "buckets" and flow. If you use an editor a lot I'd suggest you try using it over notecards and see if it helps you implement GTD.

Plus you can do several nifty things with an editor that just isn't possible with pen and paper. For instance, I link each action item with a "project" or a "goal" and each day I get "points" for all items completed (based on these links). It's a great reward system!

This actually isn't too bad - It's basically a rehash of the things you'd expect, but with some personal commentary.

I think the big thing about time management is it all comes down to this uber-productivity philosophy. Works well for getting "stuff" done, but sometimes being productive means having a terrific idea when you're out on a hike.

For me, time management is simply about getting all the cruft (bills, etc, etc) out of my life -- and enabling me to be free the rest of the time... So, I think a lot of these productivity kicks are probably really useful -- they just take it too far.

The problem I have with most time management techniques is that I'm a writer. Sometimes sitting down and trying to write for an hour is like trying to bleed a stone, some days it just isn't going to happen.

I've noticed I can easily get 3,000 words done in a few days without a problem, but the extra 2,000 words before I finish a chapter tends to screw me up. Suddenly I'm doing two jobs at once, I have to finish one story line but tie it to the next. I also hate the advice of 'you should write n words a day no matter what', because it's inherently useless advice. I don't write unless I'm writing something I know is half-way decent, I don't believe I should write simply for writings sake.

I don't think any programmer here would add an extra 500 lines of random code 'just cause'.

The only time management advice that I took to heart was "If it takes less than 5 minutes, do it now, don't schedule it." It is amazing how much stress it saves, particularly with my SO, and it takes about as much time to do it as write it down

I'm really surprised that one has yet to mention this book / system - Time Management For System Administrators:

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007836/

This is a wonderful system focusing on goals, priorities, proper breakdown of tasks, stress management, relaxation, maintaining focus, etc. It gives a wonderful breakdown of how to manage planners, and this system has been working for me for years now. Hope you find some value out of this!

"Time management systems don't work...for me...well, except for this one."

The author's apparent todo list:

- Write blog post

- Put paid link to one site in.

- Do internal SEO to other post with paid link

I have recently been wondering if all of this multitasking I was so proud of is a prime reason that time seems to pass too quickly... You mean it's almost April already?

I have been working at purposely slowing down, doing a more thorough job. My clients and friends seem to appreciate having my full attention. So does my wife :)

And I still get enough done that I am satisfied. Maybe it is because I am not having to do things over so much?

You have too much free time. Get some more clients so you can make more money. Doesn't your wife want ...'things'?!?

But then I would have less time to pore over HN!

In other news ...Most Top 10 Lists are Rubbish

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