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Slightly OT, but... No idea why people are so obsessed with making lists. I've never needed lists in my life. If something is important, I'll get to it. If no

Slightly OT, but... No idea why people are so obsessed with making lists. I've never needed lists in my life. If something is important, I'll get to it. If not, I'll forget it and to hell with it.

mstijak 10y ago
I write down ideas for my framework while working on other projects. If I don't take note, it's very hard to recover later and this way my backlog is always full.
overcast 10y ago
For everyday life stuff, I agree. Even in school I never wrote down test dates, or what I had to work on. For projects at work, kind of impossible to remember every little tick box to check off.
gkya 10y ago
I keep a list of interesting plays, films, conferences, exhibitons etc. that I want to see. I can't go to all of them at once. At uni I'm given homeworks, I keep a list of them, I can't remember them all, they all have different deadlines, pages in books, etc. When I need to go shopping, I usually make a list, so that I don't forget anything and don't buy stuff I already have. I keep a list of things to buy or to research or whatnot later, some more important, some less, but I don't want to think about them at that moment, but later. Sometimes there are books that I wait to get published, I simply can't do anything for them ATM, don't even know when they'll be published. All this and much more is kept in lists and fit into 8-10 A6 pages of my agenda, with room for new stuff. I'm not obsessed, but without these lists, I've forgotten many things that I'd rather not. I review about 10 A6 pages 2-3 times-a-week, and check today's page in the agenda. Adds up to 'bout 30mins per week, I spend at least twenty times that in the bathroom.
warp 10y ago
A list allows you to forget things even if they're important, because you learn to trust the list to bring it back to you when you're ready for it. It's a way to clear your mind and allow you to focus on what's important right now without being distracted by thoughts of other things which are also important but not relevant to the task at hand.
cossatot 10y ago
I read this recently, in a (rather interesting) interview/discussion between the economist Tyler Cowen and media wunderkind Ezra Klein [0]: "COWEN: What’s your best time management tip? KLEIN: To-do listing. The thing that honestly decides whether or not I have a good, effective day, where I feel like I got things, or whether I just wasted a bunch of time, was whether in the morning, I wrote down what I thought I had to get done that day, and throughout the day, was rigorous about putting the little tasks that come up onto that same list and then checking them off. I keep that list going, and I keep it updated, and I keep referring back to it, I am able to be pretty efficient. If I don’t, I get lost and overwhelmed and anxious. I don’t find the big tasks to be the hard thing there. The thing that is really hard to do is the tasks that take between 3 and 15 or 20 minutes. You keep in your head, when you probably have 30 minutes where you can knock out a couple of them. They don’t feel like a big enough deal. You don’t remember them. You didn’t write them down in a clear place. They just sit there causing you, or at least me, endless anxiety. When I actually have them in front of me, I will stay on top of them. Actually staying on top of them is more important, certainly, than I gave it credit for a year ago. " [0]: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/ezra-klein-tyler-cowen-vox-healthcare-journalism-bias-396196082c31#.a4fpkl5wf https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/ezra-klein-tyler...

Slightly OT, but... No idea why people are so obsessed with making lists. I've never needed lists in my life. If something is important, I'll get to it. If not, I'll forget it and to hell with it.

mstijak 10y ago

I write down ideas for my framework while working on other projects. If I don't take note, it's very hard to recover later and this way my backlog is always full.

overcast 10y ago

For everyday life stuff, I agree. Even in school I never wrote down test dates, or what I had to work on. For projects at work, kind of impossible to remember every little tick box to check off.

gkya 10y ago

I keep a list of interesting plays, films, conferences, exhibitons etc. that I want to see. I can't go to all of them at once. At uni I'm given homeworks, I keep a list of them, I can't remember them all, they all have different deadlines, pages in books, etc. When I need to go shopping, I usually make a list, so that I don't forget anything and don't buy stuff I already have. I keep a list of things to buy or to research or whatnot later, some more important, some less, but I don't want to think about them at that moment, but later. Sometimes there are books that I wait to get published, I simply can't do anything for them ATM, don't even know when they'll be published. All this and much more is kept in lists and fit into 8-10 A6 pages of my agenda, with room for new stuff. I'm not obsessed, but without these lists, I've forgotten many things that I'd rather not. I review about 10 A6 pages 2-3 times-a-week, and check today's page in the agenda. Adds up to 'bout 30mins per week, I spend at least twenty times that in the bathroom.

warp 10y ago

A list allows you to forget things even if they're important, because you learn to trust the list to bring it back to you when you're ready for it. It's a way to clear your mind and allow you to focus on what's important right now without being distracted by thoughts of other things which are also important but not relevant to the task at hand.

cossatot 10y ago

I read this recently, in a (rather interesting) interview/discussion between the economist Tyler Cowen and media wunderkind Ezra Klein [0]: "COWEN: What’s your best time management tip? KLEIN: To-do listing. The thing that honestly decides whether or not I have a good, effective day, where I feel like I got things, or whether I just wasted a bunch of time, was whether in the morning, I wrote down what I thought I had to get done that day, and throughout the day, was rigorous about putting the little tasks that come up onto that same list and then checking them off. I keep that list going, and I keep it updated, and I keep referring back to it, I am able to be pretty efficient. If I don’t, I get lost and overwhelmed and anxious. I don’t find the big tasks to be the hard thing there. The thing that is really hard to do is the tasks that take between 3 and 15 or 20 minutes. You keep in your head, when you probably have 30 minutes where you can knock out a couple of them. They don’t feel like a big enough deal. You don’t remember them. You didn’t write them down in a clear place. They just sit there causing you, or at least me, endless anxiety. When I actually have them in front of me, I will stay on top of them. Actually staying on top of them is more important, certainly, than I gave it credit for a year ago. " [0]: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/ezra-klein-tyler-cowen-vox-healthcare-journalism-bias-396196082c31#.a4fpkl5wf https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/ezra-klein-tyler...