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4 text files that go from vague life goals down to concrete hourly tasks: - todo-year.txt : all goals for the year - todo-month.txt : track subset of annual g

4 text files that go from vague life goals down to concrete hourly tasks: - todo-year.txt : all goals for the year - todo-month.txt : track subset of annual goals to finish this month - todo-week.txt : track all monthly high-level tasks to finish this week - todo.txt : daily task plan based on weekly plan. Switch tasks every 1 hour. In a day, I plan for about 4 tasks, so each task ends up getting about 2 hours. Self-employed consultant here who has suffered from chronic procrastination after my daily routine became disorganized and unsupervised for some years. If I focus on only one thing for days on end, I feel I'm not doing much. The system above has helped me reduce (but not eliminate) both procrastination and distractions, and given me some satisfaction that I'm being relatively more productive.

MarsAscendant 8y ago
The tiering of goals in the way you've done it is brilliant. Do you consult upper-tier lists when making lower-tier assignments?
- lovelearning 8y ago
  That is in fact the core of the idea. I suck at low-level planning. All the wishful annual life goals have to trickle down as concrete daily activity to get anywhere. My mind is excellent at building castle projects in the air and even good at high-level analysis of them using flowery language. What it sucks at is converting all that into concrete steps. That's why I have to explicitly break them down into monthly, weekly, daily, and even hourly chunks.
  - MarsAscendant 8y ago
    Was this a natural progression of your system, or did you have to try it to see that it works?
    - lovelearning 8y ago
      Good question - made me revisit my memories. TLDR some aspects were a progression, but the planning part was something I had to try out over a year to convince myself that I finally have something that works. I'd say I have always done the daily todo all my professional life. Started it as my daily work plan when I was a salaried employee. Only tracked work-related tasks with it, but it was necessary because I had multiple project responsibilities and deadlines then. I actually thought of myself back then as a very disciplined person. Even the life goals thing is something I have been doing from my salaried years. An annual document where I wrote details about my career wishes and personal improvements for the coming year. There were plans in those docs, but they were rather nebulous and not tracked. That system worked ok for my salaried life. But when I became a consultant, things fell apart. When I had client projects to work on, my work-life balance became terrible, I missed project deadlines constantly, missed out on hobbies, and felt stressed and demotivated. When I did not have client projects, I went the other extreme - making lots of plans but terribly distracted and not finishing anything. Until then, I had not realized just how much of my earlier discipline was not because of me alone, but actually because of the structured and supervised environment inside a company. When I went alone, much of my discipline disappeared, and along with it, my self-confidence. I had actually refused lucrative client projects because I wasn't confident of meeting any deadlines. I tried many planning systems over those years. GTD, Trello, Mind mapping tools. It's taken me a lot of self-analysis, experimentation and tweaks to understand why I had planning problems, and what I should do to overcome them. The main evolution between the system I have now versus the system I had back then is that all life goals now trickle down into concrete hourly tasks. While 2015 was a terrible year professionally, this system helped me improve my situation in 2016, and more so in 2017-2018. It's working out for me, thankfully.
      - MarsAscendant 8y ago
        Thanks a lot for the answer. Do you have a routine to (re)visit your plans and see if you're on the right track? Do you even have a concept of the wrong track under this system? How does your work time, according to the `todo`, fare against leisure time? Is it similarly scheduled, or does it come whenever the work hours have been accomplished? Do you ever miss your goals during the hours of work? What do you do if that happens?
gyvastis 8y ago
This is brilliant! Thanks!
- lovelearning 8y ago
  You're welcome! But I'd like to caution people here who are impressed with my system that in the past, I too have been very impressed by other people's planning systems. I have tried a bunch of systems and tools that have worked for others - GTD, Pomodoro, Mind mapping, Trello, Kanban. But they did not work for me, often for minor reasons. The problem was not with those systems, but with my mind. Understanding how my own brain works, knowing its quirks, and using something that gets out of the way is how I got here. Text files and simple command-line tools work and even motivate me, but may not work or motivate somebody else. I'd suggest focussing on knowing your own quirks, and on ways you know can improve your self-discipline. The tools are usually not the root problem.
juvoni 8y ago
I do something similar. It's similar to reverse engineering the year starting from the year end goals, although I personally think more in terms of building personal systems instead of setting annual goals. The book "The One Thing" talks a bit more about that concept of breaking down the year into, quarters, then from quarters into months and then into weekly sprints and daily tasks. I also wrote a little bit about my high level process here: https://juvoni.com/you-are-a-rocketship/ https://juvoni.com/you-are-a-rocketship/
- lovelearning 8y ago
  You have explained it beautifully in your blog! Matches a lot of my own thinking on the topic and workflows.
graeme 8y ago
Hoe do you review and decide what to move between places? And, how do you handle smaller todos: get milk, register domain, clean fridge, call dentist, etc Do those go in the list, or are they handled elsewhere? Review and menial tasks are the two things that trip up my efforts at a system. Also, where do you keep working notes for tasks in these lists: in the list or elsewhere? I'm very interested, it sounds like a good system.
- lovelearning 8y ago
  Reviewing: I review the daily todo every morning and update it every night, and I do EOW and EOM status updates with detailed analyses for the weekly and monthly files. Why could I not finish something? What should I do next month to correct it? That kind of analysis. Moving / Reprioritizing: It's a necessity for me, because unlike a salaried job, I have to balance between my revenue-earning work and my hobbies. I do have to defer tasks often, to a different week or even a different month, all the time. The EOW and EOM updates are when I decide what I should defer to later. But the ideal is to stick to the schedule as much as possible through self-discipline and willpower. Working notes: Each project and idea gets its own directory. I maintain current status of each project in its directory along with detailed notes, so that I can pick it right back months later. These are stored and tracked outside the above todo system. Since I review even the yearly goals everyday, everything gets done to a reasonable extent even if it's some months later than planned. Trivial tasks: When I started off, I had just the yearly and daily todos. It's precisely because of trivial tasks - esp tasks which are one-time but critical nonetheless - that I introduced weekly and monthly todos. Anything important that takes time and requires me to allocate time goes into one of these lists. Otherwise my mind is unable to allocate time efficiently. Very trivial tasks like "have lunch" don't go anywhere, but I keep buffers in the daily todo for all such daily routine tasks. If you are into learning stuff, you have probably heard of "deliberate practice". Reviewing tasks daily/weekly/monthly, and explicitly analyzing and planning for them is my way of "deliberate practice" for my life goals. I have tried a lot of visual tools in the past - GTD tools, Trello, Mind mapping - but two problems all of them had was 1) writing detailed analysis is not possible in the given interface and 2) they are designed as store to remember tools which means review may be possible but deliberate practice of planning is not easy.
billfruit 8y ago
What if you are traveling, and can't access your pc?
- lovelearning 8y ago
  These are plain text files that I sync using a git repo on my private server. I don't need to travel much, but I do switch between 3 machines regularly, which means I have to sync them up often. I use git command line.
  - pbreit 8y ago
    That seems _much_ more convoluted than a synced notes app. Worth the effort?
    - lovelearning 8y ago
      Most of the time, I'm on laptops or a desktop. All Linux. I'm comfortable with the command-line and have moved away from GUI tools. So, I don't find this workflow convoluted. Not much of a mobile user and use very few apps. I especially don't use apps that store data on external servers. I use Evernote for storing some information, but not for any kind of planning. I'm sure good apps with self-hosted options exist, but this system works for me, is efficient, and so I don't feel like trying out anything else.
    - steelframe 8y ago
      The elegance of any given tool or language doesn't matter. What matters is what you as a user are motivated to use to solve the problem.
    - war1025 8y ago
      For anyone that already uses git for work, it doesn't seem like much of a difference from normal workflows. I also use git to handling backup and syncing of a bunch of personal data. One of my projects for the new year is I've started keeping a daily journal both for personal stuff and for work. I have a git repo with two folders "Personal" and "Work". I run "vim `date -I`" to open a file for the current day and add to it periodically throughout the day. Each time I add something I just commit and push like I do already for work. I've found that it has been helpful at work in particular for maintaining a running log of what I'm planning to do and what I've actually gotten around to. Like all new years resolution things, time will tell if I actually keep it up. But I guess circling back around: Git works really well for syncing things between machines. That's sort of what it's for after all.
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
I don't use these tiers, but in terms of tooling simple text files is definitely the way to go.
- lovelearning 8y ago
  Yup. Command-line, git and a dumb text file editor are all that I use. But I wasn't always this way. Used to be a Windows guy in the past and used to prefer specialized GUI tools over command-line or general tools. Have tried all kinds of planning tools - GTD tools, Trello, some Kanban stuff, multiple Mind mapping tools. All of them had some minor deficiency or the other which I'd end up obsessing over, instead of doing my actual freaking work. It's taken me years to satisfy myself that git and an editor are more than enough.
rodolphoarruda 8y ago
I use a 4 file system as well. I keep them in Evernote for easy access. - health: things I need to do to improve my health. It goes from food recipes to medical appointments to exam results. - future: I'm in my mid-forties, so I look ahead with more pragmatism in my eyes. In this file I put the kind of work (or projects) I want to be involved with until retirement (included). Info here serves as directives for all the things I need/want to do. - want!: here I list the things I want to buy in order to "settle down" as a consumer. I put a total cost of things in the bottom line of the file. It shows $ 12,000 as of today. - tasks: my consolidated to-do list.
- joshgel 8y ago
  I have a "want" list in evernote too! I think it helps me buy less stuff that I don't really need. I add stuff to it when I see something on the expensive side that I 'want' but am not sure about purchasing. I check on it every once in a while and think "why did I want a GoPro, I never would have used it". Boom saved $500.
  - rodolphoarruda 8y ago
    Yes. What I do is I leave the item in the list but cross it out to indicate I have changed my mind. I have 7 different motorcycle models listed, all crossed out at the moment as I gave up the idea of buying one. I bought an XBOX instead of a PS4, I check marked the former and crossed out the latter.
  - sh87 8y ago
    I started something similar. I keep a list of all the money that I saved by either not buying some fancy thing, use a cheaper service, DIY/repair, etc. Then, I spend it on some cheap thrills. Funnily, This process has made me happier. I kinda have a good reason to say no!
rsync 8y ago
"4 text files that go from vague life goals down to concrete hourly tasks ..." I do the same thing but I keep all of them in a single text file and hide sections with the "fold" feature of vim. I tried last year to dive deep into markdown and emacs and evil mode, blah blah blah, but in the end the only thing I really needed was the folding feature of vim. What makes it work for me is folding based on any kind of indent (tab or space) and fold-toggle with the 'tab' key. The indent folding I use is at 0xRKTFUG[1] and the tab-as-fold-toggle (along with a few other folding items) is at 0x3HS2RD. [1] https://0x.co/RKTFUG https://0x.co/RKTFUG ... and so on ...
- was8309 8y ago
  folding based on any kind of indent is great, and why I've used jEdit for years
baxtr 8y ago
4 columns in Trello wouldn’t do the job?
- charlesju 8y ago
  The problem is that you don't want to see a lot of the other goals very often, you want to stay focused on what you want to do, so a primary TODO is a great way to do that. I also find that the speed to setting your TODOs matters a lot, and nothing is faster than a TXT file, especially if you travel a lot and internet can be spotty. As a mental trick, it also seems to help that the first thing I do is look at my TODO since it's the fastest and untethered from my web browser. Once I open my web browser, I need to check e-mail and other things and it's quick and easy to get distracted before you're focused on your short term goals for your working session. But of course, if Trello works for you, but all means.
- lovelearning 8y ago
  It's a subjective preference. I have tried Trello in the past over an extended period, but it didn't motivate me to keep using it. Elsewhere, I have talked about solving disorganization by knowing the quirks of one's own mind. One of my quirks was internet distractions, and at one point, it got so bad that I'd simply keep my router switched off and use an inconvenient mobile for any research. No easy internet=less distractions, but also no trello. Another quirk is that I like to write down my planning analyses and thoughts, sometimes in multiple paras. They help me to plan and correct plans. Trello or mind mapping interfaces are not convenient to satisfy that kind of quirk. TXT is ideal for it.
  - baxtr 8y ago
    Thanks for your answer. I use something similar but in Trello. It is ok for me. BTW: your method reminded me of this article which influenced my thinking around self organizing https://www.jotform.com/blog/success-without-motivation/ https://www.jotform.com/blog/success-without-motivation/
    - lovelearning 8y ago
charlesju 8y ago
Me too! At least with the single TODO.txt. Here are some other tips: -- I sync my TODO.txt with Google Drive so when I switch computers, or I want to check on my phone it's sync'd. -- I don't do weekly or monthly goals, but I do yearly check-ins with myself and every few weeks after I feel like I'm not as focused as I want to be. I keep those goals in Google Docs since those are things that I want a more permanent place.
dorfsmay 8y ago
I have tried all sorts of methods and software, but in the end always ended up with a single "today.txt" file. This year I have started to the same thing, split into today/this_week/this_month but also buy, sell, and for repetitive events, monthly (change passwords, upgrade comps, lubricate all the things), spring and autumn. I try to review most weekly, with a special focus on this_week, this_month, buy and sell.
klenwell 8y ago
I do something very similar but I use a Trello board with columns like these. Specifically: - Daily - Weekly - Monthly - [YEAR] Completed I like Trello because the cards support checklists, due dates, and comments which are great features for promoting habits associated with getting stuff done. Some cards are recurring (getting moved from monthly or weekly to daily column), others are finishable. I take a small but real pleasure in moving cards between columns and especially getting things over into the annual completed column. One note on the due dates: I don't use due dates as deadlines. I use them as "check in on this no later than" dates. For me, the distinction is critical.
- liminal18 8y ago
  have the same setup actually although I use kanban zone a site I worked on instead =)
- technics256 8y ago
  Do you have an example you can share?
- nextos 8y ago
  For any workflow, it is worth considering org-mode. It has certainly satisfied me after trying many different alternatives. It is plain text, so you are not locked into a proprietary object format. Thus, you can edit it using any text editor in case Emacs is not around. In fact, Vim is on its way towards implementing a decent subset of org-mode. GitHub and GitLab also support org-mode syntax and can even render HTML from it. There are also decent mobile clients, and even some bridges to things like Trello. Emacs has lots of org-mode primitives that can be used to deploy any workflow. Moving items across sections or files can be efficiently done using org-refile. Storing new items on the flight from many different places can be done using org-capture and org-protocol. More importantly, you can easily create alternative views of your files using org-agenda. org-mode also has timestamps, so you can set schedules, deadlines or simply record events. I've just scratched the surface. My favorite workflow is Ivy Lee's Method, which is a very basic kanban with two states. Easy to implement in org-mode. Just two trees: Today and Inbox. Every morning I refile 6 tasks from Inbox to Today. I keep new thoughts and important items with deadlines, etc inside my Inbox. I can use org-agenda to quickly see if there are any incoming deadlines or events, which I store in a separate calendar file. If you want to get fancy, you can use lots of trees, one per project. And create lots of tasks to plan things ahead. Then use task states to schedule things for today and get a clean view, again, using org-agenda or a sparse tree. There are infinite possibilities.
wrkronmiller 8y ago
How do you deal with dependencies and blockers? Edit: for example if you are waiting on an update to a library or a new version of iOS/Xcode?
- lovelearning 8y ago
  Blocker in client project : either DIY, or look for workarounds, or escalate to client and reduce scope. Planning gets suitably modified for rest of the week and month. Blocker in personal projects : some of my ideas have turned out to be not as easily implementable as I had first imagined. I usually reduce scope - because the idea after all started off as part of some life goal - but I have also dropped some ideas entirely. I record the reasons in the project directory to revisit later. I deliberately avoid overanalyzing in such cases - as somebody prone to procrastination, overanalysis of a tough idea is like entering a blackhole for me.

MarsAscendant 8y ago

The tiering of goals in the way you've done it is brilliant. Do you consult upper-tier lists when making lower-tier assignments?

lovelearning 8y ago
That is in fact the core of the idea. I suck at low-level planning. All the wishful annual life goals have to trickle down as concrete daily activity to get anywhere. My mind is excellent at building castle projects in the air and even good at high-level analysis of them using flowery language. What it sucks at is converting all that into concrete steps. That's why I have to explicitly break them down into monthly, weekly, daily, and even hourly chunks.
- MarsAscendant 8y ago
  Was this a natural progression of your system, or did you have to try it to see that it works?
  - lovelearning 8y ago
    Good question - made me revisit my memories. TLDR some aspects were a progression, but the planning part was something I had to try out over a year to convince myself that I finally have something that works. I'd say I have always done the daily todo all my professional life. Started it as my daily work plan when I was a salaried employee. Only tracked work-related tasks with it, but it was necessary because I had multiple project responsibilities and deadlines then. I actually thought of myself back then as a very disciplined person. Even the life goals thing is something I have been doing from my salaried years. An annual document where I wrote details about my career wishes and personal improvements for the coming year. There were plans in those docs, but they were rather nebulous and not tracked. That system worked ok for my salaried life. But when I became a consultant, things fell apart. When I had client projects to work on, my work-life balance became terrible, I missed project deadlines constantly, missed out on hobbies, and felt stressed and demotivated. When I did not have client projects, I went the other extreme - making lots of plans but terribly distracted and not finishing anything. Until then, I had not realized just how much of my earlier discipline was not because of me alone, but actually because of the structured and supervised environment inside a company. When I went alone, much of my discipline disappeared, and along with it, my self-confidence. I had actually refused lucrative client projects because I wasn't confident of meeting any deadlines. I tried many planning systems over those years. GTD, Trello, Mind mapping tools. It's taken me a lot of self-analysis, experimentation and tweaks to understand why I had planning problems, and what I should do to overcome them. The main evolution between the system I have now versus the system I had back then is that all life goals now trickle down into concrete hourly tasks. While 2015 was a terrible year professionally, this system helped me improve my situation in 2016, and more so in 2017-2018. It's working out for me, thankfully.
    - MarsAscendant 8y ago
      Thanks a lot for the answer. Do you have a routine to (re)visit your plans and see if you're on the right track? Do you even have a concept of the wrong track under this system? How does your work time, according to the `todo`, fare against leisure time? Is it similarly scheduled, or does it come whenever the work hours have been accomplished? Do you ever miss your goals during the hours of work? What do you do if that happens?

gyvastis 8y ago

This is brilliant! Thanks!

lovelearning 8y ago
You're welcome! But I'd like to caution people here who are impressed with my system that in the past, I too have been very impressed by other people's planning systems. I have tried a bunch of systems and tools that have worked for others - GTD, Pomodoro, Mind mapping, Trello, Kanban. But they did not work for me, often for minor reasons. The problem was not with those systems, but with my mind. Understanding how my own brain works, knowing its quirks, and using something that gets out of the way is how I got here. Text files and simple command-line tools work and even motivate me, but may not work or motivate somebody else. I'd suggest focussing on knowing your own quirks, and on ways you know can improve your self-discipline. The tools are usually not the root problem.

juvoni 8y ago

I do something similar. It's similar to reverse engineering the year starting from the year end goals, although I personally think more in terms of building personal systems instead of setting annual goals. The book "The One Thing" talks a bit more about that concept of breaking down the year into, quarters, then from quarters into months and then into weekly sprints and daily tasks. I also wrote a little bit about my high level process here: https://juvoni.com/you-are-a-rocketship/ https://juvoni.com/you-are-a-rocketship/

lovelearning 8y ago
You have explained it beautifully in your blog! Matches a lot of my own thinking on the topic and workflows.

graeme 8y ago

Hoe do you review and decide what to move between places? And, how do you handle smaller todos: get milk, register domain, clean fridge, call dentist, etc Do those go in the list, or are they handled elsewhere? Review and menial tasks are the two things that trip up my efforts at a system. Also, where do you keep working notes for tasks in these lists: in the list or elsewhere? I'm very interested, it sounds like a good system.

lovelearning 8y ago
Reviewing: I review the daily todo every morning and update it every night, and I do EOW and EOM status updates with detailed analyses for the weekly and monthly files. Why could I not finish something? What should I do next month to correct it? That kind of analysis. Moving / Reprioritizing: It's a necessity for me, because unlike a salaried job, I have to balance between my revenue-earning work and my hobbies. I do have to defer tasks often, to a different week or even a different month, all the time. The EOW and EOM updates are when I decide what I should defer to later. But the ideal is to stick to the schedule as much as possible through self-discipline and willpower. Working notes: Each project and idea gets its own directory. I maintain current status of each project in its directory along with detailed notes, so that I can pick it right back months later. These are stored and tracked outside the above todo system. Since I review even the yearly goals everyday, everything gets done to a reasonable extent even if it's some months later than planned. Trivial tasks: When I started off, I had just the yearly and daily todos. It's precisely because of trivial tasks - esp tasks which are one-time but critical nonetheless - that I introduced weekly and monthly todos. Anything important that takes time and requires me to allocate time goes into one of these lists. Otherwise my mind is unable to allocate time efficiently. Very trivial tasks like "have lunch" don't go anywhere, but I keep buffers in the daily todo for all such daily routine tasks. If you are into learning stuff, you have probably heard of "deliberate practice". Reviewing tasks daily/weekly/monthly, and explicitly analyzing and planning for them is my way of "deliberate practice" for my life goals. I have tried a lot of visual tools in the past - GTD tools, Trello, Mind mapping - but two problems all of them had was 1) writing detailed analysis is not possible in the given interface and 2) they are designed as store to remember tools which means review may be possible but deliberate practice of planning is not easy.

billfruit 8y ago

What if you are traveling, and can't access your pc?

lovelearning 8y ago
These are plain text files that I sync using a git repo on my private server. I don't need to travel much, but I do switch between 3 machines regularly, which means I have to sync them up often. I use git command line.
- pbreit 8y ago
  That seems _much_ more convoluted than a synced notes app. Worth the effort?
  - lovelearning 8y ago
    Most of the time, I'm on laptops or a desktop. All Linux. I'm comfortable with the command-line and have moved away from GUI tools. So, I don't find this workflow convoluted. Not much of a mobile user and use very few apps. I especially don't use apps that store data on external servers. I use Evernote for storing some information, but not for any kind of planning. I'm sure good apps with self-hosted options exist, but this system works for me, is efficient, and so I don't feel like trying out anything else.
  - steelframe 8y ago
    The elegance of any given tool or language doesn't matter. What matters is what you as a user are motivated to use to solve the problem.
  - war1025 8y ago
    For anyone that already uses git for work, it doesn't seem like much of a difference from normal workflows. I also use git to handling backup and syncing of a bunch of personal data. One of my projects for the new year is I've started keeping a daily journal both for personal stuff and for work. I have a git repo with two folders "Personal" and "Work". I run "vim `date -I`" to open a file for the current day and add to it periodically throughout the day. Each time I add something I just commit and push like I do already for work. I've found that it has been helpful at work in particular for maintaining a running log of what I'm planning to do and what I've actually gotten around to. Like all new years resolution things, time will tell if I actually keep it up. But I guess circling back around: Git works really well for syncing things between machines. That's sort of what it's for after all.

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

I don't use these tiers, but in terms of tooling simple text files is definitely the way to go.

lovelearning 8y ago
Yup. Command-line, git and a dumb text file editor are all that I use. But I wasn't always this way. Used to be a Windows guy in the past and used to prefer specialized GUI tools over command-line or general tools. Have tried all kinds of planning tools - GTD tools, Trello, some Kanban stuff, multiple Mind mapping tools. All of them had some minor deficiency or the other which I'd end up obsessing over, instead of doing my actual freaking work. It's taken me years to satisfy myself that git and an editor are more than enough.

rodolphoarruda 8y ago

I use a 4 file system as well. I keep them in Evernote for easy access. - health: things I need to do to improve my health. It goes from food recipes to medical appointments to exam results. - future: I'm in my mid-forties, so I look ahead with more pragmatism in my eyes. In this file I put the kind of work (or projects) I want to be involved with until retirement (included). Info here serves as directives for all the things I need/want to do. - want!: here I list the things I want to buy in order to "settle down" as a consumer. I put a total cost of things in the bottom line of the file. It shows $ 12,000 as of today. - tasks: my consolidated to-do list.

joshgel 8y ago
I have a "want" list in evernote too! I think it helps me buy less stuff that I don't really need. I add stuff to it when I see something on the expensive side that I 'want' but am not sure about purchasing. I check on it every once in a while and think "why did I want a GoPro, I never would have used it". Boom saved $500.
- rodolphoarruda 8y ago
  Yes. What I do is I leave the item in the list but cross it out to indicate I have changed my mind. I have 7 different motorcycle models listed, all crossed out at the moment as I gave up the idea of buying one. I bought an XBOX instead of a PS4, I check marked the former and crossed out the latter.
- sh87 8y ago
  I started something similar. I keep a list of all the money that I saved by either not buying some fancy thing, use a cheaper service, DIY/repair, etc. Then, I spend it on some cheap thrills. Funnily, This process has made me happier. I kinda have a good reason to say no!

rsync 8y ago

"4 text files that go from vague life goals down to concrete hourly tasks ..." I do the same thing but I keep all of them in a single text file and hide sections with the "fold" feature of vim. I tried last year to dive deep into markdown and emacs and evil mode, blah blah blah, but in the end the only thing I really needed was the folding feature of vim. What makes it work for me is folding based on any kind of indent (tab or space) and fold-toggle with the 'tab' key. The indent folding I use is at 0xRKTFUG[1] and the tab-as-fold-toggle (along with a few other folding items) is at 0x3HS2RD. [1] https://0x.co/RKTFUG https://0x.co/RKTFUG ... and so on ...

was8309 8y ago
folding based on any kind of indent is great, and why I've used jEdit for years

baxtr 8y ago

4 columns in Trello wouldn’t do the job?

charlesju 8y ago
The problem is that you don't want to see a lot of the other goals very often, you want to stay focused on what you want to do, so a primary TODO is a great way to do that. I also find that the speed to setting your TODOs matters a lot, and nothing is faster than a TXT file, especially if you travel a lot and internet can be spotty. As a mental trick, it also seems to help that the first thing I do is look at my TODO since it's the fastest and untethered from my web browser. Once I open my web browser, I need to check e-mail and other things and it's quick and easy to get distracted before you're focused on your short term goals for your working session. But of course, if Trello works for you, but all means.
lovelearning 8y ago
It's a subjective preference. I have tried Trello in the past over an extended period, but it didn't motivate me to keep using it. Elsewhere, I have talked about solving disorganization by knowing the quirks of one's own mind. One of my quirks was internet distractions, and at one point, it got so bad that I'd simply keep my router switched off and use an inconvenient mobile for any research. No easy internet=less distractions, but also no trello. Another quirk is that I like to write down my planning analyses and thoughts, sometimes in multiple paras. They help me to plan and correct plans. Trello or mind mapping interfaces are not convenient to satisfy that kind of quirk. TXT is ideal for it.
- baxtr 8y ago
  Thanks for your answer. I use something similar but in Trello. It is ok for me. BTW: your method reminded me of this article which influenced my thinking around self organizing https://www.jotform.com/blog/success-without-motivation/ https://www.jotform.com/blog/success-without-motivation/
  - lovelearning 8y ago

charlesju 8y ago

Me too! At least with the single TODO.txt. Here are some other tips: -- I sync my TODO.txt with Google Drive so when I switch computers, or I want to check on my phone it's sync'd. -- I don't do weekly or monthly goals, but I do yearly check-ins with myself and every few weeks after I feel like I'm not as focused as I want to be. I keep those goals in Google Docs since those are things that I want a more permanent place.

dorfsmay 8y ago

I have tried all sorts of methods and software, but in the end always ended up with a single "today.txt" file. This year I have started to the same thing, split into today/this_week/this_month but also buy, sell, and for repetitive events, monthly (change passwords, upgrade comps, lubricate all the things), spring and autumn. I try to review most weekly, with a special focus on this_week, this_month, buy and sell.

klenwell 8y ago

I do something very similar but I use a Trello board with columns like these. Specifically: - Daily - Weekly - Monthly - [YEAR] Completed I like Trello because the cards support checklists, due dates, and comments which are great features for promoting habits associated with getting stuff done. Some cards are recurring (getting moved from monthly or weekly to daily column), others are finishable. I take a small but real pleasure in moving cards between columns and especially getting things over into the annual completed column. One note on the due dates: I don't use due dates as deadlines. I use them as "check in on this no later than" dates. For me, the distinction is critical.

liminal18 8y ago
have the same setup actually although I use kanban zone a site I worked on instead =)
technics256 8y ago
Do you have an example you can share?
nextos 8y ago
For any workflow, it is worth considering org-mode. It has certainly satisfied me after trying many different alternatives. It is plain text, so you are not locked into a proprietary object format. Thus, you can edit it using any text editor in case Emacs is not around. In fact, Vim is on its way towards implementing a decent subset of org-mode. GitHub and GitLab also support org-mode syntax and can even render HTML from it. There are also decent mobile clients, and even some bridges to things like Trello. Emacs has lots of org-mode primitives that can be used to deploy any workflow. Moving items across sections or files can be efficiently done using org-refile. Storing new items on the flight from many different places can be done using org-capture and org-protocol. More importantly, you can easily create alternative views of your files using org-agenda. org-mode also has timestamps, so you can set schedules, deadlines or simply record events. I've just scratched the surface. My favorite workflow is Ivy Lee's Method, which is a very basic kanban with two states. Easy to implement in org-mode. Just two trees: Today and Inbox. Every morning I refile 6 tasks from Inbox to Today. I keep new thoughts and important items with deadlines, etc inside my Inbox. I can use org-agenda to quickly see if there are any incoming deadlines or events, which I store in a separate calendar file. If you want to get fancy, you can use lots of trees, one per project. And create lots of tasks to plan things ahead. Then use task states to schedule things for today and get a clean view, again, using org-agenda or a sparse tree. There are infinite possibilities.

wrkronmiller 8y ago

How do you deal with dependencies and blockers? Edit: for example if you are waiting on an update to a library or a new version of iOS/Xcode?

lovelearning 8y ago
Blocker in client project : either DIY, or look for workarounds, or escalate to client and reduce scope. Planning gets suitably modified for rest of the week and month. Blocker in personal projects : some of my ideas have turned out to be not as easily implementable as I had first imagined. I usually reduce scope - because the idea after all started off as part of some life goal - but I have also dropped some ideas entirely. I record the reasons in the project directory to revisit later. I deliberately avoid overanalyzing in such cases - as somebody prone to procrastination, overanalysis of a tough idea is like entering a blackhole for me.