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It's weird. The exact same problem affects to-do apps and note taking apps. I'm pretty sure it was a HN post I recently read where the problem of to-do apps was

It's weird. The exact same problem affects to-do apps and note taking apps. I'm pretty sure it was a HN post I recently read where the problem of to-do apps was discussed. People go through phases: discover an app, start with a clean slate, get a better night's sleep because you get to write down all the things you're definitely going to do, work your way through x% of the list, gradually accumulate a list of things you shamefully failed to do, and eventually getting thoroughly depressed with the app and stop using it (or nuke the list every few months). Browser tabs are just another to-do list. So are those kitchen drawers, garden shed workbenches with half finished projects on them, tech books you insist that you'll read, and Udemy courses you bought in a sale and never used. These things all remind me of the 90 year old man who lives half a mile from my house, who has two beautiful old cars in his garage. One is an Austen A30, the other a '65 Jaguar S-Type. Both sit quietly rusting under disintegrated tarps. I'm sure he must have had dreams of fully renovating them when he bought them 30 years ago, but he knows that when he dies they'll end up as scrap, or maybe as some other retired gentleman's project that'll never get completed, and whenever he sees them, I'm sure it eats away at him, like the rust eats his cars.

dredmorbius 5y ago
You're likely thinking of "We Still Don't Get Things Done", posted 11 days ago: https://www.wired.com/story/to-do-apps-failed-productivity-tools/ https://www.wired.com/story/to-do-apps-failed-productivity-t... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28010716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28010716 And yes, there's a lot there that resonated strongly with me. The cars-under-tarps anecdote is an excellent one. As life goes on, one accumulates an ever-growing list of gates which have closed irrevocably behind one. The German word Torschlusspanik is a brilliant invocation of this. The English equivalent is roughly "mid-life crisis", though the German captures far more of the essence and slowly-building grief. https://blogs.transparent.com/german/torschlusspanik/ https://blogs.transparent.com/german/torschlusspanik/ There's saying (memory says Chinese though I'm unsure and can't locate it): a wise man is prepared to part with his possessions several times in his lifetime. That might extend to dreams and expectations as well as physical cargo.
- vagrantJin 5y ago
  Funny to come across this thread. Just a week ago my best friend had been moaning for two years about tidying his garage. I came with two beers intent on a chill weekend watchinh olympics but I happened to run into his wife as she was parking her car in the garage. We spoke for a minute but I decided we'd rather start working on his garage. My friend came out and we started. A few hours later, tired and hungry, his SO served us with a pretty full meal which is both extraordinary and unusual since Ive never been given anything by her in the ten years we've known each other nor have I seen her cooking. I have no doubt my boy got some that night but it was satisfying to just work and do something useful to bond. I think there is something fundamentally ancient about it, like how young women braid each others hair and probably been doing it since year one of humanity's existence. Maybe we need others to get things done. Maybe the man would jumpstart his passion if someone shared his thing for restoration. I dont really know.
  - freediver 5y ago
    Now that you mention it, it seems that there is indeed a phenomena worth exploring here. I may have done many things in life that I perceive to be valuable for our family, but nothing earned me as many 'points' with Mrs. as did the act of just sucking it up and cleaning the entire garage one day.
    - throwamon 5y ago
      Phenomena is the plural of phenomenon.
  - megamindbrian2 5y ago
    Last week I did something I was planning for 10 years. Yesterday, I did something I was planning for 1.5 years. Don't underestimate yourselves. Even a car under a tarp have enormous value to the right collector who's been missing a piece of frame that cracked on his car under a tarp and both of them have value as a yard decoration in the background scene of a space movie where the spaceship is flying away from a farm with old cars laying around for 50 years.
  - 5y ago
flippinburgers 5y ago
I have a short list of daily todos that include six subjects that I want to focus on. If I do something towards that task, I add a checkmark for every day of every month. It is interesting to see how consistent or inconsistent I am with tasks over time. This is primarily motivation towards learning basics or attempting master of something. People should be taught to pursue things on a daily basis from a young age. I think it helps temper expectations about what can actually be done over time, which is not a skillset I had when I was younger: I was in constant pursuit of too many things all of the time.
andruby 5y ago
Good explanation of something that I've felt and discussed a few times before. I've stopped using todo apps and just write the daily/weekly list of high-prio items in my paper notebooks. That way it doesn't accumulate a bunch of items that'll I'll likely never get too. The most important things will resurface anyway. I feel much better not dragging along a list that keeps growing. Sure, that means I'll sometimes forget or be late or need reminding, but from my perspective, that's an acceptable trade-off.

dredmorbius 5y ago

You're likely thinking of "We Still Don't Get Things Done", posted 11 days ago: https://www.wired.com/story/to-do-apps-failed-productivity-tools/ https://www.wired.com/story/to-do-apps-failed-productivity-t... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28010716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28010716 And yes, there's a lot there that resonated strongly with me. The cars-under-tarps anecdote is an excellent one. As life goes on, one accumulates an ever-growing list of gates which have closed irrevocably behind one. The German word Torschlusspanik is a brilliant invocation of this. The English equivalent is roughly "mid-life crisis", though the German captures far more of the essence and slowly-building grief. https://blogs.transparent.com/german/torschlusspanik/ https://blogs.transparent.com/german/torschlusspanik/ There's saying (memory says Chinese though I'm unsure and can't locate it): a wise man is prepared to part with his possessions several times in his lifetime. That might extend to dreams and expectations as well as physical cargo.

vagrantJin 5y ago
Funny to come across this thread. Just a week ago my best friend had been moaning for two years about tidying his garage. I came with two beers intent on a chill weekend watchinh olympics but I happened to run into his wife as she was parking her car in the garage. We spoke for a minute but I decided we'd rather start working on his garage. My friend came out and we started. A few hours later, tired and hungry, his SO served us with a pretty full meal which is both extraordinary and unusual since Ive never been given anything by her in the ten years we've known each other nor have I seen her cooking. I have no doubt my boy got some that night but it was satisfying to just work and do something useful to bond. I think there is something fundamentally ancient about it, like how young women braid each others hair and probably been doing it since year one of humanity's existence. Maybe we need others to get things done. Maybe the man would jumpstart his passion if someone shared his thing for restoration. I dont really know.
- freediver 5y ago
  Now that you mention it, it seems that there is indeed a phenomena worth exploring here. I may have done many things in life that I perceive to be valuable for our family, but nothing earned me as many 'points' with Mrs. as did the act of just sucking it up and cleaning the entire garage one day.
  - throwamon 5y ago
    Phenomena is the plural of phenomenon.
- megamindbrian2 5y ago
  Last week I did something I was planning for 10 years. Yesterday, I did something I was planning for 1.5 years. Don't underestimate yourselves. Even a car under a tarp have enormous value to the right collector who's been missing a piece of frame that cracked on his car under a tarp and both of them have value as a yard decoration in the background scene of a space movie where the spaceship is flying away from a farm with old cars laying around for 50 years.
- 5y ago

flippinburgers 5y ago

I have a short list of daily todos that include six subjects that I want to focus on. If I do something towards that task, I add a checkmark for every day of every month. It is interesting to see how consistent or inconsistent I am with tasks over time. This is primarily motivation towards learning basics or attempting master of something. People should be taught to pursue things on a daily basis from a young age. I think it helps temper expectations about what can actually be done over time, which is not a skillset I had when I was younger: I was in constant pursuit of too many things all of the time.

andruby 5y ago

Good explanation of something that I've felt and discussed a few times before. I've stopped using todo apps and just write the daily/weekly list of high-prio items in my paper notebooks. That way it doesn't accumulate a bunch of items that'll I'll likely never get too. The most important things will resurface anyway. I feel much better not dragging along a list that keeps growing. Sure, that means I'll sometimes forget or be late or need reminding, but from my perspective, that's an acceptable trade-off.