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How I manage my todos, priorities and calendar
- brianmwang 14y agoI hate to nitpick, but I can't stand this persistent meme that eating in the morning boosts your metabolism, or some such nonsense. It doesn't[1]. This idea needs to die. 1. http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debunked.html http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debun...
- driverdan 14y agoI hate to nitpick, but the "Skipping breakfast is bad and will make you fat" section of that article is terrible, as are some of the others. The skipping breakfast section doesn't actually show data either way, it's just the author expressing his interpretation of correlation studies. I'm not saying he's necessarily wrong, just that he needs to show real data to support his claims. Also, the site's design is terrible and the font size is too small.
- knes 14y agoThanks for sharing. Seems like Asana is getting a lot of love lately. Is it that great? I mainly use Workflowy & Trello but I'm always shopping for a better tool :)
- namityadav 14y agoIt's a great tool. My only complaint is -- Currently there's no way to search notes or comments inside a task.
- ryancarson 14y agoI found Trello too complex and WorkFlowy under-supported. Asana is just the right mix. It's powerful and flexible but it gets out of your way.
- AndrewDucker 14y agoI'm intrigued - what lack of support did you find in Workflowy? I use it a lot, and never needed any support, and now I'm wondering what I'm missing!
- ryancarson 14y agoThere was a big bug with not being able to add/edit tasks once you had sorted by a hashtag. Probably fixed now, but it was a show-stopper for me.
- rattray 14y agoI think they fixed that a long time ago: http://blog.workflowy.com/new-workflowy-feature-add-stuff-while-in-sear http://blog.workflowy.com/new-workflowy-feature-add-stuff-wh... Re: responsiveness, I've actually been very impressed by the team. I've emailed them about 3 separate product suggestions, one of which was actually pretty dumb. They got back to me in all cases very quickly and thoughtfully. It's a small team -- still just two guys, I think -- but they've been doing a great job to improve it quickly.
- czzarr 14y agoTrello too complex, seriously? I had the opposite experience, I found Trello super straightforward, and so did my parents, girlfriend, friends etc, whereas Asana is not that straightforward
- AndrewDucker 14y agoI just had a play with Asana, which is great in many ways. But doesn't support a hierarchy other than Project->Task. As I frequently want to break things down into much smaller chunks and subchunks I guess I'll be sticking with Workflowy for the moment. Shame, really. It's got a great interface.
- saturdaysaint 14y agoExactly, I replaced Asana with Workflowy for this reason. The other showstopper for me was that Asana's mobile site is almost unusable outside of a fast wi-fi connection. Workflowy is extremely usable from a phone even when I'm in an area with weak bandwidth. So I can take notes and start planning while in a meeting and they're on my screen when I get back to my desk.
- pclark 14y agoAsana is amazing. The product has matured to the point of excellence.
- ryancarson 14y agoAgreed. It's largely replacing email at Treehouse (our company).
- csallen 14y agoCurious: How has Asana improved in the past 6 months?
- Spearchucker 14y agoIt is amazing, I agree. That said, it's an amazing product I can't use. I need access when I'm not connected to the web, because I do most of this stuff when I'm on the Underground. It needs to sync up when I'm connected - and Asana doesn't support my phone. It's a sign of the times - there is great (read AWESOME) and very usable tech out there these days, but it's reach is still severely limited - be that because of cost constraints, walled gardens or developer laziness, arrogance or ignorance. So I end up writing this kind of software for myself. I end up with a tiny fraction of the features in exchange for reach.
- tarmac 14y agoYou should give Intervals a try if you haven't already: http://www.myintervals.com/ http://www.myintervals.com/
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ryancarson 14y agoSounds like a good strategy. That's the main point - having a strategy instead of running round like crazy.
- Brajeshwar 14y agoHere is another good read (from few days ago on HackerNews) on "How Uservoice use Trello & Google Docs to make UserVoice better every day." - http://www.uservoice.com/blog/founders/trello-google-docs-product-management/ http://www.uservoice.com/blog/founders/trello-google-docs-pr... We're following this rather closely and is pretty good so far. Once you master a decent tool, you can do lots with it. So, if you're an Asana guys, go with it but then if you've started with Trello, make the best of it. You do not need to get swayed here and there trying to find the best tool ready-made for you.
- ryancarson 14y agoTotally agree. Use whatever tool works best for you.
- ryancarson 14y agoJust read that post from UserVoice. Wow, very insightful. Thank you!
- vdm 14y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3853688 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3853688
- josefonseca 14y agoHere’s my daily routine Wake up at 4:54am [ ... ] Jump in front of my iMac IMO if you wake up before 5 AM and jump in front of your iMac then there's either something wrong with your to-do list program or with your to-do list itself.
- g0su 14y agoHe said he go to bed at 9, it's just a schedule shift.
- ryancarson 14y agoI'm a morning person. Plus this allows me to work around my kid's schedule and have more time with them when they're awake
- josefonseca 14y agoWhat if your kids catch a flu? What if your car breaks down? What if a friend has a broken car two blocks from your house and calls you and asks for help? These types of tight schedules where everything is machinized and controlled don't work in real life unless you become a robot - in that case you've defeated your purpose. Sleep at 9, wake at 5 is not realistic unless you're training for IronMan triathlon. These types of schedules break down because things break down: family has issues, cars break, flu happens, roofs get infiltrations, pipes leak, electricity fails, planes get late, airports are crowded, streets may jam, etc, etc... You part on the principle that everything just works and you can sleep at 9 and wake at 4, that is simply unreal.
- ColinWright 14y agoYou seem to be assuming that he doesn't adapt to circumstances. I have a similarly constrained schedule, and yet when things come up I adapt to them. Having the schedule means that I don't have to adapt very often, and under normal circumstances I can concentrate on the job, and not on scheduling the job. You're replying as if the man is an unthinking robot, enslaved by the schedule, but it's clear to me that he's not. He's simply automated what he can to free up time from scheduling, and to make sure important things are scheduled in properly as the norm.
- dools 14y agoThe take home message here is two fold. 1) build some regularity into your daily routine even if you wear different hats 2) Systemisation will set you free People griping about specifics of management systems aren't seeing the forest for the trees.
- ryancarson 14y agoGreat summary - thanks.
- dools 14y agoThanks for the mixergy interview ;)
- ryancarson 14y agoNo prob :)
- josefonseca 14y ago1) build some regularity into your daily routine [ ... ] 2) Systemisation will set you free Translation: transform yourself into a cron daemon that fires up at 4:54AM and sleeps at 9PM.
- Killah911 14y agoEasier said than done. We'd all love to just make it up as it goes. But there's aHUGE problem with that. It's fine if you're single and don't have a ton of responsibilities, but if you're a parent and a responsible to a bunch of other people in your startup who are parents too, then what Ryan has done here is nothing short of remarkable. Call it what you will, but it sure as hell is effective and true. And if you have to sacrifice being a "rebel" or "free spirit" for anything, your kids, family & health are probably the right things to do it for. Not to mention, he's already pretty out there for running a startup, working from home and still caring for stability and the health of his families. I know many people who work their regular 9-5's who're doing far worse & they think they're real "rebels" for hitting the bars every night or something else that's utterly stupid... I'd gladly transform myself into a cron daemon and have the best of life, family & work that I love doing. Thanks for the post Ryan, you're an inspiration to other Dadtreprneurs!
- mhb 14y agoWhy 4:54 instead of, say, 4:55 or 5:00?
- Splines 14y agoI'm sort of surprised at that - the level of detail you'd need to care about 4:54 vs 5:00 would imply that you'd have stuff like "take a shower" in the schedule somewhere. Unless Ryan's not the showering type, which is fine. Personally I find that it freshens me up and sets a nice "start of the day" feeling. If I miss a day for whatever reason I feel icky and unkempt.
- skittles 14y agoJust look at his picture, and you will have your answer.
- raldi 14y agoI'm not seeing it.
- ryancarson 14y agoGives me six minutes to get downstairs and in front of my iMac. The exactness helps me hustle instead of hitting the snooze button.
- nato1138 14y agoIt's interesting about the 3 life goals. http://chizzl.com/ http://chizzl.com/ is anchored to that -- a sort of Asana for your personal goals, if you will.
- rodolphoarruda 14y agoAsana looks pretty interesting. I've been using TeamworkPM for 2 years now. It has been through a lot of improvements lately, which makes it very powerfull now. It organizes client/partner companies and projects in a matrix sort of way that allows you to really flexibilize access to tools and documentation. I like it. For my personal stuff I use a simple TXT file with markup. E.g. ##House Maintenance //Project or recurring work + Clean patio //task that must be done - Paint doors //optional task No dates or anything. I just look at the list early in the morning and decide what I'm doing for the day.
- Karunamon 14y agoThere are a few things I'm looking for in a task management system. Those of you who remember IWantSandy when it was still around will have a good idea of the feature set I'm looking for, plus a few things. Haven't yet found something that ticks all of the boxes.. * Easy task entry with natural language Do thing with Dick and Jane at Location tonight at 6:30 pm and every week on thursday (Sandy was the undisputed queen of this) * Truly cross platform (Needs a web interface, and an identical native interface on Win/Mac/Lin, and a mobile interface which isn't tied to the web) * A CLI would be nice but isn't super necessary (ala Taskwarrior) A couple of my favorite systems get one or two things right really, really welll but then fall flat elsewhere. I'd use Omnitask everywhere except it's completely mac specific, and therefore useless for my needs. Seriously. I would give almost anything to have Omnitask on Windows. Wunderlist isn't bad at all, but isn't terribly stable on the native client, have to enter everything the old fashioned way though. Taskwarrior is my go-to in a *NIX environment but, again, useless anywhere else. I'm currently using Todoist, which has a decent web interface and mobile client, with semi-decent NLP task entry, and it's doing okay for me now. I'm very, very seriously open to suggestions here. Asana looks absolutely beautiful, but it's another Mac-Web specific product, so wouldn't work for me.
- amix 14y agoI am very happy to see a Todoist user on HN! Founder of Todoist here. Unfortunately I had I detour in social networks so the work on Todoist has been slow for some years. But about 8 months ago we started fulltime working on it and Wedoist. I think we have some amazing updates coming up that will solve all of your issues (ex. HTML5 enabled web and desktop applications and native mobile apps for iOS and Android). Stay tuned and please provide feedback of how we can improve Todoist (here or on my email which is in my HN profile).
- Karunamon 14y agoI'm actually very very happy with Todoist (just reread my OP and found that it made it sound like I was an unpleaseable jerkface) - really the two things that I'd give almost anything to see are a native desktop app with some kind of quick entry (Another Omnitask feature I've been spoiled by.. cmd+space, window pops up, enter details, tab, enter further details like date, enter, task is captured), and as mentioned elsewhere here, a better mobile app. I would pay by the month for something like this! In any case, keep up what you're doing. You've got a killer app :)
- dewiz 14y agoI registered with my Google Account to asana.com after reading the article. The interface is nice but I want to unsubscribe now, being sure that they cannot access my account anymore. Is there any FAQ or page in Google listing all the enabled applications ? Thank you
- dewiz 14y agofound this, and it's really annoying: == Next, write to us and we will deactivate your account. Please note that the deactivation we perform deactivates your individual Asana account and not your shared workspaces. We don't yet provide a single action or button to delete your Asana account as we want to safeguard against unintended deletion. == from: http://help.asana.com/customer/portal/articles/204659-how-do-i-delete-my-asana-account- http://help.asana.com/customer/portal/articles/204659-how-do...
- dewiz 14y agofound the Google page, not that easy if anyone needs: https://www.google.com/dashboard https://www.google.com/dashboard click on "Websites authorised to access the account"
- zamryok 14y agoIn your account settings (https://www.google.com/settings/ https://www.google.com/settings/), next to "Authorising applications & sites" there's an Edit link.
- fps 14y agoYou can list authorized apps and revoke authorization from Google's accounts page. Here's the direct link: https://accounts.google.com/b/0/IssuedAuthSubTokens?hl=en https://accounts.google.com/b/0/IssuedAuthSubTokens?hl=en or go here: https://www.google.com/settings/ https://www.google.com/settings/ and click "Authorizing applications & sites"
- dewiz 14y agothank you fps! I found the same in the dashboard ;-)
- mflanagan 14y agoI really enjoyed this post. I like the idea of rotating through the different responsibilities during the week (Product / Video & Teaching etc). I could see this helping make sure you don't neglect areas that maybe you are a little less passionate about - for example, maybe you like thinking about product development but not HR / Culture, having a split schedule like this makes sure you put a little time into the HR problems each week instead of waiting for some emergency to force you to concentrate on that.
- iuguy 14y agoAsana doesn't look anywhere near as good as Wunderlist.
- rockyleal 14y agoAnd yet, this makes way more sense to me: http://zenhabits.net/how-to-live-without-the-clock/ http://zenhabits.net/how-to-live-without-the-clock/
- dave1619 14y agoRyan - how do you conduct meetings with the people you need to during the week? Is it via Skype or chat? Also, what are the challenges of managing others via distance? Lastly, how do you compare Asana with Basecamp?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- adam_lowe 14y agoDecent post on his workflow. Asana looks nice enough but I would always prefer to use open source or pay for a product rather than using a product that is just free. Just doesn't make sense unless they are selling your info to advertisers. Does anyone know how/why Asana is free?
- driverdan 14y agoIt's freemium, free for <30 users.