5 ms·

I recently had a stressfully large quantity of small tasks to do on a deadline. First, making a list eased the stress -- I had a place to collect tasks as I th

by klyrs 3y ago

I recently had a stressfully large quantity of small tasks to do on a deadline. First, making a list eased the stress -- I had a place to collect tasks as I thought of them, rather than trying to keep them all straight in my head. Second, having a list provides a reward structure: if you get a thing done, you get to tick a box. And then the list is shorter. Some tasks ended up being more complicated -- break it down! I'd make a new subtask, and tick the box. Todo lists are also highly recommended for people with ADHD for unstimulating, repetitive tasks. Chore sheets, for example, are how my house stays marginally clean. Chores are broken into daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. Again, the best reward is tick the box. The irony here is that I've lived my whole life with ADHD, and it wasn't until my kid struggled with his own ADHD that I learned this incredible hack from his counselor. Lists are stressors. Unwritten lists are way bigger stressors. When you tick the box the relief is palpable. That said, I don't use apps for this purpose. Pen and paper, a whiteboard, or a laminated printout is best. Because the last thing I need when I'm aiming to finish unstimulating tasks is to interact with a smartphone.

oDot 3y ago
This is very accurate and partly while I, shameless plug here, built Nestful[0]. Nestful also utilizes periods for tasks, but takes it a bit further by trying to eliminate decision making by allowing you to just do "whatever's next". Prioritizing a task when adding it is way less stressful than deciding which one to do just before doing it. [0] https://nestful.app https://nestful.app
- klyrs 3y ago
  Your shamelessness is duly noted. You cannot touch the simplicity of pen and paper. Your app works on a platform plagued by push notifications, which destroys all momentum instantaneously. You describe two points of friction in adding tasks: periods, and priority. I'm sure you have put much thought and care into these features and are justifiably proud of them. Good for you, you did a thing that you cared about. I need task lists for the things I don't care about, that I'd rather not do. And picking up my phone at any point in that process is completely self-defeating. Having multiple options and do-dads in the task-collecting interface encourages pseudo-productivity in the form of fiddling with the list. In this case, the pen is mightier than the smartphone. If I want priorities, I have multiple colors of pen.
  - oDot 3y ago
    I'm all for whatever works for you. Edit: In fact, you can partly use the same system with pen and paper: https://blog.nestful.app/spontaneous-productivity/ https://blog.nestful.app/spontaneous-productivity/
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - yakshaving_jgt 3y ago
    We're all different. Personally I can't do pen and paper. Writing with a pen makes my hand hurt, and I can't hyperlink to other information that I'll need when addressing a task or easily delegate some task to my partner, especially when travelling. I prefer tools that get out of my way — and I think Trello is great for this — for me personally, a good electronic TODO list gives me fewer problems than strictly pen and paper would.
  - eternityforest 3y ago
    If you don't care about it, then pen and paper does seem to be ideal, but smartphones have a major advantage of portability. For me, every extra object in my life is a source of stress. Something that can be lost, along with all the information, in a list with no cloud sync. Paper is fine around the house, for non urgent things, that I'll probably remember again next time I actually see the problem I made the list entry about, which is probably a pretty big fraction of the stuff people use lists for. Perhaps I should try a paper list for that one of these days. But if there's any chance I might want to take something outside.... cloud sync is amazing. It does majorly create a pseudo productivity trap, and a temptation to check a bullshit notification(Made a little more manageable by Keep tiles on a smart watch), and probably is not optimal for getting stuff done. But it sure is convenient not to have an extra item to carry.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      > If you don't care about it, then pen and paper does seem to be ideal, but smartphones have a major advantage of portability. For me, apps are a non-starter because I don't trust them to not collect and sell/exploit my personal info. Even if they insist there's zero telemetry collected because they don't care what types of tasks their users most often use the app for, a change of owner/management can change that situation without notice. The last place I want something like that is in the cloud.
- vxNsr 3y ago
  Your link doesn’t resolve on my iPhone in safari, literally says server cannot be found.
  - oDot 3y ago
    Thank you for letting me know. I can't replicate it -- in what country/state are you?
    - vxNsr 3y ago
      I think it was my local isp doing something weird, a different link was also not working I dropped off wifi and everything worked.
wruza 3y ago
Second, having a list provides a reward structure: if you get a thing done, you get to tick a box. And then the list is shorter It also provides unmatched satisfaction when you see a THICK stack of past todo papers in your drawer.
- pph 3y ago
  > unmatched satisfaction (if they were done)
franky47 3y ago
> When you tick the box the relief is palpable I don't find this to be true (in my case) for repeatable tasks like chores. Sure, ticking the box may provide a little relief, but knowing that it has to be done all over again the next week, endlessly, doesn't help with finding satisfaction.
- pavlov 3y ago
  Same here. Behind every neat list of boxes to tick, I see an endless array of lists stretching into the future, only terminating in the moment of my death. Ticking those boxes is like adding bricks to the wall that is burying me into the cellar.
  - austinjp 3y ago
    You are not alone! I never experience positive feelings when crossing an item off a to-do list. It feels like a slow creeping death to me. Walling oneself into a tomb - exactly.
    - jorvi 3y ago
      I mean, do you feel the same about taking a breath and the follow-up exhale? Life must extremely stressful to those for whom every discrete thing is a countdown to death.
      - coremoff 3y ago
        You don't have to think about breathing. Many people consider the day-to-day grind of a job as being akin to death; for OP and similar people, these daily tasks are the same thing
      - pavlov 3y ago
        We're talking about the emotions related to the specific format of ticking off tasks in a to-do list. Some people in this thread say they feel a palpable relief, even joy. I feel the opposite. I don't suppose anybody feels so strongly about breathing (except maybe some yogi?). For me, it's about the uniformity of the checkbox experience. It reduces any achiement to "just another brick in the wall". Apparently for others, the same uniformity turns the tasks into something more like a game. At the end of a day, I like to go back and look at artifacts that resulted from my efforts. Maybe I wrote something, or drew some sketches, or at least had a productive conversation in digital format. Re-reading those outputs feels meaningful in a way that looking at ticked boxes doesn't. (In my day job I work on video meeting recording systems, among other things. One of the projects that I currently find very motivating is to produce better artifacts from meetings, e.g. automatically created video summaries with context-relevant graphics. Maybe my own love of reviewing work artifacts is why this feels so relevant, and somebody else will find them meaningless because the act of ticking a box — "Discussed X with N" — provided the same satisfaction.)
doctor_eval 3y ago
The first time I created a checklist in a Trello card, and then completed it … the whole list does this shimmer when you tick the last checkbox. It’s just delightful.
- ChildOfChaos 3y ago
  If you use a Kanban system with a 'Done' list and you put a party popper emoji in the title, when you drag the card to it, you get a burst of Confetti :)
  - doctor_eval 3y ago
    Oh I totally do use trello for Kanban and I must try that next time! Thanks!
crabmusket 3y ago
> a stressfully large quantity of small tasks to do on a deadline This is like the ideal use-case for lists and list apps. The list has an endpoint, you can stack tasks up then knock them down. Your progress through the project is actually hill-shaped[1], not "Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill"-shaped. [1]: https://basecamp.com/shapeup/3.4-chapter-13#work-is-like-a-hill https://basecamp.com/shapeup/3.4-chapter-13#work-is-like-a-h...
jclardy 3y ago
Personally I don't see the same relief when ticking a box, but I 100% get the unwritten list. If there is something I need to do that is unscheduled and undocumented, I feel it always takes up a huge portion of my thinking. Writing it down and creating a reminder forces me to at least think about when I will try to do it, and lets me forget about it till that point.
steve_adams_86 3y ago
Haha, I figured some of this out when my son was diagnosed too. My diagnosis came a couple years later. Lately I’ve been wanting an eink display that generates TODOs for a day based on periodical tasks and my calendar. I’d just stick it on my refrigerator I think, maybe have the option to toggle to a calendar view as well. Time and remembering tasks is such an issue in my family, it seems like it could be a huge help. Unfortunately I’d need to write that program and those displays can be super expensive — I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance. Doing it with an old iPad would be trivial, but I don’t want my kids to have free access to an iPad on the refrigerator. Plus they burn through batteries, are a bit too obvious, and wouldn’t have the subtle grayscale appearance I’d like to have. It could be an alright way to validate the idea, at least.
- Jcowell 3y ago
  > Doing it with an old iPad would be trivial, but I don’t want my kids to have free access to an iPad on the refrigerator. Just use guided access mode and they’ll only be able to access the specific app you set it to.
  - steve_adams_86 3y ago
    Thanks for that tip! I wasn’t aware this is an option. I might be able to make that work in the short term.
- spiffytech 3y ago
  In 2015 I bought a no-name touchscreen e-reader (Boyue T62) and rooted it, so it could run Android apps or display web pages. $112 shipped. I don't know what that product scene is like these days, but that might make this kind of project more accessible.
  - steve_adams_86 3y ago
    This is why I like this site! That’s such a great idea. Here I was thinking about ordering the eink screen component and attaching it to a Pi Zero or something, printing a case for it, etc. This is a much better idea, thanks! Between your comment and another, I think I’ve got perfect short term and longer term solutions.
paczki 3y ago
I'm not being hyperbolic when I say making a todo list has literally changed my life with ADHD, and I discovered this in the dumbest way possible. I've been more or less addicted to MMOs, especially World of Warcraft. During Shadowlands (the previous expansion) the game was so awful that I quit for the first time after playing since 2004. I could play all day, and grind for hours on end just for Number Go Up™ and Box Checked©. It had NEVER occurred to me, even with an ADHD diagnosis, that this was the primary driving factor behind my addiction. So after I quit with the intention of becoming a software engineer I was trying to find ways to tweak my brain to feel like I was still playing. I ended up programming a daily/weekly list so I could check off items as I did them.. I then added a faux xp bar and gave myself 10xp for dailies and 30 for weeklies. Then it was on. I keep myself in check to not add random bullshit to gain xp from - but using psychological manipulative videogame tactics to keep my brain on track in everyday life has completely changed everything for me. Throughout all of this I've also returned to videogames in the last few months with a much healthier approach, because now I get my gratification from my real world goals and my need to check off my task list is greater than my need for more pixels. It's made videogames a lot more enjoyable too not focusing on playing past the point they're fun.
- klyrs 3y ago
  > I then added a faux xp bar and gave myself 10xp for dailies and 30 for weeklies Omg I love this! Great work, that's fun and creative :)
- sclu1034 3y ago
  Just the other day I discovered that someone made that idea commercial. It's an app called Habitica: https://habitica.com/static/home https://habitica.com/static/home. Complete with RPG-esque equipment as rewards, quests, pets and bosses.

by klyrs 3y ago

oDot 3y ago

This is very accurate and partly while I, shameless plug here, built Nestful[0]. Nestful also utilizes periods for tasks, but takes it a bit further by trying to eliminate decision making by allowing you to just do "whatever's next". Prioritizing a task when adding it is way less stressful than deciding which one to do just before doing it. [0] https://nestful.app https://nestful.app

klyrs 3y ago
Your shamelessness is duly noted. You cannot touch the simplicity of pen and paper. Your app works on a platform plagued by push notifications, which destroys all momentum instantaneously. You describe two points of friction in adding tasks: periods, and priority. I'm sure you have put much thought and care into these features and are justifiably proud of them. Good for you, you did a thing that you cared about. I need task lists for the things I don't care about, that I'd rather not do. And picking up my phone at any point in that process is completely self-defeating. Having multiple options and do-dads in the task-collecting interface encourages pseudo-productivity in the form of fiddling with the list. In this case, the pen is mightier than the smartphone. If I want priorities, I have multiple colors of pen.
- oDot 3y ago
  I'm all for whatever works for you. Edit: In fact, you can partly use the same system with pen and paper: https://blog.nestful.app/spontaneous-productivity/ https://blog.nestful.app/spontaneous-productivity/
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- yakshaving_jgt 3y ago
  We're all different. Personally I can't do pen and paper. Writing with a pen makes my hand hurt, and I can't hyperlink to other information that I'll need when addressing a task or easily delegate some task to my partner, especially when travelling. I prefer tools that get out of my way — and I think Trello is great for this — for me personally, a good electronic TODO list gives me fewer problems than strictly pen and paper would.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  If you don't care about it, then pen and paper does seem to be ideal, but smartphones have a major advantage of portability. For me, every extra object in my life is a source of stress. Something that can be lost, along with all the information, in a list with no cloud sync. Paper is fine around the house, for non urgent things, that I'll probably remember again next time I actually see the problem I made the list entry about, which is probably a pretty big fraction of the stuff people use lists for. Perhaps I should try a paper list for that one of these days. But if there's any chance I might want to take something outside.... cloud sync is amazing. It does majorly create a pseudo productivity trap, and a temptation to check a bullshit notification(Made a little more manageable by Keep tiles on a smart watch), and probably is not optimal for getting stuff done. But it sure is convenient not to have an extra item to carry.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > If you don't care about it, then pen and paper does seem to be ideal, but smartphones have a major advantage of portability. For me, apps are a non-starter because I don't trust them to not collect and sell/exploit my personal info. Even if they insist there's zero telemetry collected because they don't care what types of tasks their users most often use the app for, a change of owner/management can change that situation without notice. The last place I want something like that is in the cloud.
vxNsr 3y ago
Your link doesn’t resolve on my iPhone in safari, literally says server cannot be found.
- oDot 3y ago
  Thank you for letting me know. I can't replicate it -- in what country/state are you?
  - vxNsr 3y ago
    I think it was my local isp doing something weird, a different link was also not working I dropped off wifi and everything worked.

wruza 3y ago

Second, having a list provides a reward structure: if you get a thing done, you get to tick a box. And then the list is shorter It also provides unmatched satisfaction when you see a THICK stack of past todo papers in your drawer.

pph 3y ago
> unmatched satisfaction (if they were done)

franky47 3y ago

> When you tick the box the relief is palpable I don't find this to be true (in my case) for repeatable tasks like chores. Sure, ticking the box may provide a little relief, but knowing that it has to be done all over again the next week, endlessly, doesn't help with finding satisfaction.

pavlov 3y ago
Same here. Behind every neat list of boxes to tick, I see an endless array of lists stretching into the future, only terminating in the moment of my death. Ticking those boxes is like adding bricks to the wall that is burying me into the cellar.
- austinjp 3y ago
  You are not alone! I never experience positive feelings when crossing an item off a to-do list. It feels like a slow creeping death to me. Walling oneself into a tomb - exactly.
  - jorvi 3y ago
    I mean, do you feel the same about taking a breath and the follow-up exhale? Life must extremely stressful to those for whom every discrete thing is a countdown to death.
    - coremoff 3y ago
      You don't have to think about breathing. Many people consider the day-to-day grind of a job as being akin to death; for OP and similar people, these daily tasks are the same thing
    - pavlov 3y ago
      We're talking about the emotions related to the specific format of ticking off tasks in a to-do list. Some people in this thread say they feel a palpable relief, even joy. I feel the opposite. I don't suppose anybody feels so strongly about breathing (except maybe some yogi?). For me, it's about the uniformity of the checkbox experience. It reduces any achiement to "just another brick in the wall". Apparently for others, the same uniformity turns the tasks into something more like a game. At the end of a day, I like to go back and look at artifacts that resulted from my efforts. Maybe I wrote something, or drew some sketches, or at least had a productive conversation in digital format. Re-reading those outputs feels meaningful in a way that looking at ticked boxes doesn't. (In my day job I work on video meeting recording systems, among other things. One of the projects that I currently find very motivating is to produce better artifacts from meetings, e.g. automatically created video summaries with context-relevant graphics. Maybe my own love of reviewing work artifacts is why this feels so relevant, and somebody else will find them meaningless because the act of ticking a box — "Discussed X with N" — provided the same satisfaction.)

doctor_eval 3y ago

The first time I created a checklist in a Trello card, and then completed it … the whole list does this shimmer when you tick the last checkbox. It’s just delightful.

ChildOfChaos 3y ago
If you use a Kanban system with a 'Done' list and you put a party popper emoji in the title, when you drag the card to it, you get a burst of Confetti :)
- doctor_eval 3y ago
  Oh I totally do use trello for Kanban and I must try that next time! Thanks!

crabmusket 3y ago

> a stressfully large quantity of small tasks to do on a deadline This is like the ideal use-case for lists and list apps. The list has an endpoint, you can stack tasks up then knock them down. Your progress through the project is actually hill-shaped[1], not "Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill"-shaped. [1]: https://basecamp.com/shapeup/3.4-chapter-13#work-is-like-a-hill https://basecamp.com/shapeup/3.4-chapter-13#work-is-like-a-h...

jclardy 3y ago

Personally I don't see the same relief when ticking a box, but I 100% get the unwritten list. If there is something I need to do that is unscheduled and undocumented, I feel it always takes up a huge portion of my thinking. Writing it down and creating a reminder forces me to at least think about when I will try to do it, and lets me forget about it till that point.

steve_adams_86 3y ago

Haha, I figured some of this out when my son was diagnosed too. My diagnosis came a couple years later. Lately I’ve been wanting an eink display that generates TODOs for a day based on periodical tasks and my calendar. I’d just stick it on my refrigerator I think, maybe have the option to toggle to a calendar view as well. Time and remembering tasks is such an issue in my family, it seems like it could be a huge help. Unfortunately I’d need to write that program and those displays can be super expensive — I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance. Doing it with an old iPad would be trivial, but I don’t want my kids to have free access to an iPad on the refrigerator. Plus they burn through batteries, are a bit too obvious, and wouldn’t have the subtle grayscale appearance I’d like to have. It could be an alright way to validate the idea, at least.

Jcowell 3y ago
> Doing it with an old iPad would be trivial, but I don’t want my kids to have free access to an iPad on the refrigerator. Just use guided access mode and they’ll only be able to access the specific app you set it to.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  Thanks for that tip! I wasn’t aware this is an option. I might be able to make that work in the short term.
spiffytech 3y ago
In 2015 I bought a no-name touchscreen e-reader (Boyue T62) and rooted it, so it could run Android apps or display web pages. $112 shipped. I don't know what that product scene is like these days, but that might make this kind of project more accessible.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  This is why I like this site! That’s such a great idea. Here I was thinking about ordering the eink screen component and attaching it to a Pi Zero or something, printing a case for it, etc. This is a much better idea, thanks! Between your comment and another, I think I’ve got perfect short term and longer term solutions.

paczki 3y ago

I'm not being hyperbolic when I say making a todo list has literally changed my life with ADHD, and I discovered this in the dumbest way possible. I've been more or less addicted to MMOs, especially World of Warcraft. During Shadowlands (the previous expansion) the game was so awful that I quit for the first time after playing since 2004. I could play all day, and grind for hours on end just for Number Go Up™ and Box Checked©. It had NEVER occurred to me, even with an ADHD diagnosis, that this was the primary driving factor behind my addiction. So after I quit with the intention of becoming a software engineer I was trying to find ways to tweak my brain to feel like I was still playing. I ended up programming a daily/weekly list so I could check off items as I did them.. I then added a faux xp bar and gave myself 10xp for dailies and 30 for weeklies. Then it was on. I keep myself in check to not add random bullshit to gain xp from - but using psychological manipulative videogame tactics to keep my brain on track in everyday life has completely changed everything for me. Throughout all of this I've also returned to videogames in the last few months with a much healthier approach, because now I get my gratification from my real world goals and my need to check off my task list is greater than my need for more pixels. It's made videogames a lot more enjoyable too not focusing on playing past the point they're fun.

klyrs 3y ago
> I then added a faux xp bar and gave myself 10xp for dailies and 30 for weeklies Omg I love this! Great work, that's fun and creative :)
sclu1034 3y ago
Just the other day I discovered that someone made that idea commercial. It's an app called Habitica: https://habitica.com/static/home https://habitica.com/static/home. Complete with RPG-esque equipment as rewards, quests, pets and bosses.