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With Spaced Repetition memory tools, people add everything they want to remember, then skip some days of reviewing, and then there are mountains of entries "the

With Spaced Repetition memory tools, people add everything they want to remember, then skip some days of reviewing, and then there are mountains of entries "the system wants me to review". The system is only reflecting the ongoing effort cost of keeping that many facts in memory. Review them, or risk forgetting them, is the choice. TODO lists have way more than you can do because you put that much in them. That doesn't sound like a problem with to-do lists, anymore than "I bought more books than I can read" is a problem with books; it sounds victim-blamey but it's not books' fault that you bought them. Avoiding a todo list lets you forget about some things and thus not do them without having to explicitly make the decision to not do them. That feels better, easier, but I'm not sure it actually is better - shouldn't making a conscious decision what to prioritise and what to forget lead to a better outcome?

travisjungroth 3y ago
> it sounds victim-blamey but it's not books' fault that you bought them. It sounds that way because you are putting the responsibility in the wrong place. To-do list apps advertise certain benefits. If huge swaths of people don’t actually get the benefit, that’s the to-do list failing to live up to its promise, at least for that group. If some app offered to help you organize your books and the end result was people ending up with tons of books, yeah you can kinda blame the app.
- jodrellblank 3y ago
  The benefits they advertise are that they won't forget your to-do list, and that they offer tools to help you organise (sort, filter, tag, assign priorities) to your entries - not that they will help you do the tasks or that they will tell you what things you shouldn't be doing and help you reject them, right?
  - travisjungroth 3y ago
    No, thats not really right. Go look at some Todo app websites and you’ll see lots of examples that contradict what you’re saying. From Todoist: > Become focused, organized, and calm with Todoist. The world’s #1 task manager and to-do list app. > Reach that mental clarity you’ve been longing for. From Things: > Things is the award-winning personal task manager that helps you plan your day, manage your projects, and make real progress toward your goals. > Get Things, Get Done. Whatever it is you want to accomplish in life, Things can help you get there
    - jodrellblank 3y ago
      I don't see those as contradictions; it's a common idea to write things down so that you can get them out of your head and stop thinking about them, stop stressing about remembering all the things you have to do today; that can be the 'calm' and 'mental clarity' Todoist is advertising. Become focused, organized, plan your day, manage your projects are basic offerings of any organizing tools. It's also an idea[1] that writing down your goals crystallises them and helps you actually do them. Note that they don't say "Todoist helps you do more than you could without it", or "Things will tell you what to accomplish in life" or "Things can get there for you" or "Todoist helps reach calm by forcing you to do less overall". It's possible to 'reach mental clarity' by dropping all your todos on the floor and going to live as a monk; mental clarity doesn't mean "do everything you want to do". It would be different if they were advertising something like "By using Todoist you will do 150 todo items per day, 50% more than other todo lists, or your money back", or "Things lets you double the amount of things you can accomplish in life". > "If some app offered to help you organize your books and the end result was people ending up with tons of books, yeah you can kinda blame the app." You can't; if you have a huge pile of books, and then you start using the Dewey Decimal System to organize them, is it now the Dewey Decimal system's fault that you bought so many books before you started using it? Is it the DDS' fault if you decide that you can have more books, now they're organized, even though you already knew you had too many to read before starting to use it and you misthought the problem was organization rather than quantity? [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurphy/2018/04/15/neuroscience-explains-why-you-need-to-write-down-your-goals-if-you-actually-want-to-achieve-them/?sh=37f3c6717905 https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurphy/2018/04/15/neuroscie...
      - travisjungroth 3y ago
        You’ve got tunnel vision or you’re playing word games or something. I’ve quoted very straightforward claims from two app sites. Lots of people find that these apps don’t live up to the claims for them. They don’t find clarity, they don’t find calm, they don’t get more done, they don’t get organized. The apps do not actually help. Hypotheticals of monks or any research covered in a Forbes article does not change that. The point of the “left handed scissors” in the post is that sometimes it’s not that you’re doing it wrong, it’s that you have the wrong tool. You can argue with someone having trouble cutting with scissors who is left handed, or you can help them find left handed scissors. When the packaging says “Helps you cut paper faster with ease” and 13% of the population doesn’t experience that, you also can push back on the product a bit.

travisjungroth 3y ago

> it sounds victim-blamey but it's not books' fault that you bought them. It sounds that way because you are putting the responsibility in the wrong place. To-do list apps advertise certain benefits. If huge swaths of people don’t actually get the benefit, that’s the to-do list failing to live up to its promise, at least for that group. If some app offered to help you organize your books and the end result was people ending up with tons of books, yeah you can kinda blame the app.

jodrellblank 3y ago
The benefits they advertise are that they won't forget your to-do list, and that they offer tools to help you organise (sort, filter, tag, assign priorities) to your entries - not that they will help you do the tasks or that they will tell you what things you shouldn't be doing and help you reject them, right?
- travisjungroth 3y ago
  No, thats not really right. Go look at some Todo app websites and you’ll see lots of examples that contradict what you’re saying. From Todoist: > Become focused, organized, and calm with Todoist. The world’s #1 task manager and to-do list app. > Reach that mental clarity you’ve been longing for. From Things: > Things is the award-winning personal task manager that helps you plan your day, manage your projects, and make real progress toward your goals. > Get Things, Get Done. Whatever it is you want to accomplish in life, Things can help you get there
  - jodrellblank 3y ago
    I don't see those as contradictions; it's a common idea to write things down so that you can get them out of your head and stop thinking about them, stop stressing about remembering all the things you have to do today; that can be the 'calm' and 'mental clarity' Todoist is advertising. Become focused, organized, plan your day, manage your projects are basic offerings of any organizing tools. It's also an idea[1] that writing down your goals crystallises them and helps you actually do them. Note that they don't say "Todoist helps you do more than you could without it", or "Things will tell you what to accomplish in life" or "Things can get there for you" or "Todoist helps reach calm by forcing you to do less overall". It's possible to 'reach mental clarity' by dropping all your todos on the floor and going to live as a monk; mental clarity doesn't mean "do everything you want to do". It would be different if they were advertising something like "By using Todoist you will do 150 todo items per day, 50% more than other todo lists, or your money back", or "Things lets you double the amount of things you can accomplish in life". > "If some app offered to help you organize your books and the end result was people ending up with tons of books, yeah you can kinda blame the app." You can't; if you have a huge pile of books, and then you start using the Dewey Decimal System to organize them, is it now the Dewey Decimal system's fault that you bought so many books before you started using it? Is it the DDS' fault if you decide that you can have more books, now they're organized, even though you already knew you had too many to read before starting to use it and you misthought the problem was organization rather than quantity? [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurphy/2018/04/15/neuroscience-explains-why-you-need-to-write-down-your-goals-if-you-actually-want-to-achieve-them/?sh=37f3c6717905 https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurphy/2018/04/15/neuroscie...
    - travisjungroth 3y ago
      You’ve got tunnel vision or you’re playing word games or something. I’ve quoted very straightforward claims from two app sites. Lots of people find that these apps don’t live up to the claims for them. They don’t find clarity, they don’t find calm, they don’t get more done, they don’t get organized. The apps do not actually help. Hypotheticals of monks or any research covered in a Forbes article does not change that. The point of the “left handed scissors” in the post is that sometimes it’s not that you’re doing it wrong, it’s that you have the wrong tool. You can argue with someone having trouble cutting with scissors who is left handed, or you can help them find left handed scissors. When the packaging says “Helps you cut paper faster with ease” and 13% of the population doesn’t experience that, you also can push back on the product a bit.