9 ms·

How Jeff Atwood works

114 points by bussetta 14y ago

rohamg 14y ago
I'm the biggest advocate for plowing through every day like a tank but even I would be incredibly handicapped without a proper framework. My system is designed to keep all tasks and tactics out of my head so I can focus on strategy, vision, and execution. Folks who think they don't need a system are lucky, foolish, not all that ambitious, or have others worrying about the big picture of their lives/ companies/ industries.
- rohamg 14y ago
  Ok- I would add "focused" to that list. If you're a 20 year old working on your first startup 100 hours a week then you may not need a to-do list for life (although you should certainly use one for your development!). For the rest of us, there is way too much that can possibly be done every day - and some framework for prioritization / tracking becomes essential.
columbo 14y ago
Do not under any circumstances keep to-do lists or use to-do apps. If you can't remember the most important things you need to do every day, you should work on that. And if you can't remember something you "need" to do, it's probably not worth doing in the first place. Wow. This is terrible advice. Sure it may work for some people who only have a small handful of tasks but for others who have a set of hectic projects (fix this, rewrite that, call her, email him) or even life goals (write a book, make a video game, learn to speak russian, teach daughter how to fight a bear) todo lists and goalsetting is incredibly important.
- mootothemax 14y ago
  Very much agreed with you, it's astoundingly bad advice. If you have a day job and work on stuff in your spare time, I don't see how you'll end up in a better place by NOT making task lists.
  - stephengillie 14y ago
    Because you can work on those side projects instead of spending time managing task lists.
    - npsimons 14y ago
      If you're spending significant time managing task lists, your todo system sucks, and yeah, you're probably better off tossing it out. For some of us who have problems focusing or remembering (and would otherwise waste that time), a todo list is a life saver, and if you really need it, you find or make one that works for you, and works quickly.
    - RegEx 14y ago
      You're greatly overestimating the time it takes to interact with a good task management app.
      - stephengillie 14y ago
        Some of the other posters in this thread are spending almost an hour per day just writing and revising their todo lists before actually doing anything. That's been my experience too.
        RegEx 14y ago
        Ah. Well perhaps the todo list at that point is just another means of procrastination; you feel productive because you're playing with productivity software. A todo list won't motivate you, but it can help keep motivated people organized.
    - kamaal 14y ago
      You will anyway, either in your brain on paper. Except that on paper you are more organized, you can see far and accomplish a lot with little stress.
      - stephengillie 14y ago
- pan69 14y ago
  I'm turning 40 in 10 days and never in my life have I had a dairy or an a to-do list of some kind. I might scribble down a phone number once in a while on a piece of paper, but I think that's about it. I pretty much live by the same philosophy, if I can't remember it, it probably wasn't important (to me). It might be that the "to me" is the key here. :) Edit: Oh, forgot to mention, I run a pretty hectic web development business.
  - npsimons 14y ago
    Good for you! But some of us mere mortals who work for other people and have ADD sometimes need a little something to help keep us on track.
    - pan69 14y ago
      Oh. I'm just saying. Some people don't need or want a to-do list. However, I fully agree, Jeff Atwood "giving advice" not to use a to-do list is stupid. It might work for him, doesn't mean it works for other people. My opinion would be that it would either come natural to use a to-do list or not.
  - bbwharris 14y ago
    I agree. If you can't remember, it's not a priority for you and that's okay. I operate the same way and have "hectic" schedules too.
    - sciurus 14y ago
      It's probably not okay if that thing you don't remember is a priority for your customers and/or your boss.
    - darkarmani 14y ago
      > I agree. If you can't remember, it's not a priority for you and that's okay. Tell that to airline pilots.
  - kamaal 14y ago
    >> I run a pretty hectic web development business. and >>I'm turning 40 in 10 days and never in my life have I had a dairy or an a to-do list of some kind. I really feel sad you underwent so much pain for no reason, while you could have easily avoided it. The point is pain when experienced for a long term becomes normal and doesn't feel like pain anymore. Looks like that is what happened in your case.
- crazygringo 14y ago
  I agree. I've gone through times in my life where I didn't have a lot of direct responsibilities, and my job was more idea-oriented. And I discovered that not having an agenda or to-do lists was incredibly liberating. But I've also gone through phases of my life where I would have been completely lost without a to-do list, because there are 12 different things to take care of tomorrow, and 8 the day after, etc., and they're non-negotiable, and my memory just isn't that good. If you find yourself in a position in life where you can get away with not having to-do lists, that's fantastic, but to present this as blanket "do not under any circumstances" advice is just... idiotic.
  - stephengillie 14y ago
    If my list gets too long for me to hold it all in my head, I'm too busy. Whenever I make a todo list, I forget it and find it weeks later with some items completed and the rest have turned unimportant. How many hectic projects do you (or GP) have going at once? If you have too many to remember everything you have to do for each one, either you're too busy or they're not that urgent. If a life goal (like learning Korean or Javascript or welding) isn't important enough to re-enter your head every so often (weekly, monthly, etc), then it's not important to your life, and tracking it is just wasting your time. I used to use my inbox as my to-do list. After looking at month-old emails, I realized I didn't actually want to do/handle those things, so I archived the emails. Now, I'll write a todo list to sort everything out on paper, relax, then delete it. I'm as productive as I've ever been.
    - maaku 14y ago
      What you describe is an inefficient system. Learning Korean, Javascript, or welding are projects, not next-actions/todos. I'd keep that on a project list I review as often or inoften as I need to, but usually once a week. Looking for a Korean tutor, completing that Javascript tutorial, or checking to see if there are welding lessons at the local community college are proper next actions that could be on a todo list. I suggest looking into a quality system like Getting Things Done. You're on track with some suggestions (using pen and paper to dump tasks and clear up your mind, for example), but could use some refinement.
- btilly 14y ago
  See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4614676 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4614676 for previous discussion of a blog post by Jeff on this exact topic.
  - npsimons 14y ago
    A quote from that previous article I found very apt: Jeff telling me I should stop using todo lists is like an [alcoholic] telling me to stop drinking. No, you should stop drinking, I should drink however much I like because I don't have a problem with it. Different strokes for different folks. It's also funny how Atwood comes in and comments that, hey todo lists suck, but calendars with deadlines and research notebooks (catches for "someday" ideas) are okay. My next question, of course, is does he check his calendar every morning to see what to work on next ;)
- deleted 14y ago
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- dustincoates 14y ago
  It's great advice for people who have the autonomy to set their own to-do lists. If you have other people you're working for, it's difficult to say, "I couldn't remember to do it so I don't think it was worth doing." It reminds me a lot of Mark Cuban's advice of never having a set schedule or meeting times. Great idea in theory and when you get to Atwood's or Cuban's stature it's a lot more implementable.
- frou_dh 14y ago
  Atwood seems to have a penchant for stating half-baked opinions very forcefully. Todo systems are not just for important things. They're also for mundane things. A few examples from my own: - Get the share of that £xxx bill from a housemate. - Every Tuesday and Friday: Move trash kerbside. - At least weekly: Process any unopened postal mail I have sitting around. - At least monthly: Check my online bank and scan for any unexpected transactions. Why on earth shouldn't things like these be stored and optionally teed up by a system?
  - sadga 14y ago
    > - Every Tuesday and Friday: Move trash kerbside. Oh crap, I forgot to do this yesterday!
  - jsdalton 14y ago
    The counterargument is that all of these tasks are better suited for a calendar rather than an open-ended to-do list.
    - frou_dh 14y ago
      If I'm managing tasks, I'd rather use a UI designed for managing tasks (whether they be scheduled/due or not). The point is that it's easy to dismiss the usefulness of todo systems if you characterise them as a manual-append-only-bucketlists. But unless you're Doing It Wrong, or using a terrible one, that's simply not the case.
    - kamaal 14y ago
      A calendar is basically a meta to-do list with reminders and deadlines. Most people using calendars for this purpose don't realize that they are actually using to-do lists.
  - shanselman 14y ago
    "Strong opinions weakly held" he says: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/strong-opinions-weakly-held.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/strong-opinions-wea...
- GimbalLock 14y ago
  Between this and Atwood's "Don't learn to code", I can't find a redeeming characteristic of this guy. It seems like he gets his jollies by making people feel bad because they don't code like does or think like he does.
- cgh 14y ago
  Fully agree. Prioritised to-do lists changed my life. There's a helpful little book, "How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life" by Alan Lakein that lays it all out. Highly recommended, although it dates back to the '70s so some of the work examples used are, er, anachronistic.
- prophetjohn 14y ago
  As someone constantly context-switching between a job and academia, I can't imagine how I would get by without a todo list. Mine is just a plain text file that is always open in Sublime from a Dropbox folder, but without it, I wouldn't be able to keep straight when that program in operating systems is due or what I have to do for linear algebra when I've been pairing on new story development or database setup automation all day.
- shanselman 14y ago
  Ya, Jeff's a friend but this is insanity.
- mangler 14y ago
  "call her"??? Atwood never "calls her"! She calls Atwood! Hey and I don't mean in the Hollywood kind of way - Atwood Da Man!!!
- donniezazen 14y ago
  Will you forget to write a book if you don't have it in your todo list?
- deepGem 14y ago
  I think what he means to say is to fix the root cause of bad memory, as against using to-do lists. I tend to agree. According to the book - Moonwalking with Einstein, anyone's memory can be fixed. So there's that :).
- PakG1 14y ago
  There is a reason why pilot checklists has become an airline industry standard. In a lot of situations, checklists simply do work better than anything else. "Do not under any circumstances" is hyperbole that should not be written. Without that hyperbole, OP can at least get away with saying, "airline work and Jeff Atwood's work is an apples and oranges comparison". http://www.atchistory.org/History/checklst.htm http://www.atchistory.org/History/checklst.htm
- nnq 14y ago
  It's good advice if you are more of a MAKER (developer/engineer/inventor) and less of a MANAGER or LEADER (being a "software architect", "lead developer", or even just having a very complicated personal life that involves taking care of other people and solving other non-autonomous people's problems - like just having a bunch of needy kids - can turn you from a MAKER to a MANAGER even if your "job" is just to brilliantly code stuff up) I think there's a metric, some kind of sweetspot for (brain capacity e.g. working memory times "power to focus" times mental stability)/(things to manage times how unpredictable and risky the managed things can be), after which you need to use external "crutches for your mind" ...but it's entirely your choice if you choose to live in the zone where you can do everything with your mind or you need to expand beyond it (or you might just have a very chaotic mind to begin with and need the crutches for everything).
- mjwalshe 14y ago
  And some of us (especialy dyslexics) have poor short term memory.
objclxt 14y ago
Did the title for the submission not have enough room, or is there some other reason "Cofounder", which is what the original LifeHacker title reads, got replaced with "founder" here?
- bostonpete 14y ago
  The link itself includes "founder", not "cofounder". Maybe he later updated the title...
  - lucisferre 14y ago
    I really hate the prolific use of the term cofounder around here. Everyone who "cofounds" a business is a "founder". Otherwise you're the "sole founder" if you honestly feel like making a big deal about it. A founder is a founder, whether there is one or many.
    - MattSayar 14y ago
      Exactly, nobody calls America's Founding Fathers the "Cofounding Fathers" of the nation.
      - corin_ 14y ago
        But you also wouldn't call any one of them "the founder of the nation", it works because the inclusion of "fathers" already states that they are a group.
        MattSayar 14y ago
        Of course you wouldn't say THE founder, you'd say A founder
dysoco 14y ago
Great, now I'm excited about that "awesome next big thing".
- corford 14y ago
  Can't find the post now (think it was on HN or Ars Technica a few months back) but I'm fairly certain "the next big thing" Jeff's working on is re-imagining how a web forum should work. I hope he cracks it - vbulletin and friends need to die!
  - malyk 14y ago
    Jeff posted a question in the Programmers Symposium of the Ars Technica forum asking how the members there felt about forum software. Personally, I think the ars forum works perfectly. I can't stand newsgroups, for instance...i'd be in heaven if everything were vbulletin. But maybe Jeff has something neat up his sleave!
    - TillE 14y ago
      Hopefully. I've been looking into options for fostering a small community around a new videogame, and I hate them all. Traditional forum software is much too heavy (registration, navigation), Vanilla is just strange, a subreddit is an inappropriate format (voting and the lack of long-term threads are a turnoff), and there's really not much else. It's something that's long overdue for a shakeup.
- rapind 14y ago
  I heard he was working on a to-do list app.
- iamgopal 14y ago
  I am working on www.inqzin.com, exactly the thing he opposed .
deleted 14y ago
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onosendai 14y ago
No operating system I know of, no matter how many gigabytes of memory you have, can remember more than one copied item at a time. That's ridiculous! Maybe I'm misunderstanding the functionality he's talking about, but hasn't KDE's Klipper (http://userbase.kde.org/Klipper http://userbase.kde.org/Klipper) and GNOME's Glipper (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glipper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glipper) solved this problem long ago? I'm sure there are other clipboard managers for other OS'es as well.
- mikeevans 14y ago
  I think he means built-in to the OS. He probably uses something like the ones you mentioned, as he claims that the "only must-have app I need is a global clipboard history application."
  - larsberg 14y ago
    Yeah, I had a similar reaction. I had been using the dual Office/VS clipboard ring since back in ~2002, but I forgot that it was only for applications with Office integration and not OS-wide.
- donrhummy 14y ago
  He uses Windows so I assume he doesn't know much about Linux Distros. You're correct, Klipper was the first thing I thought of as well. I assume his OS experiences are: Mac, Windows, iOS, Android judging by his info posted.
- pinchyfingers 14y ago
  First thing I thought of was the Emacs kill-ring. Emacs has been around since the 70's, so it's not like the concept hasn't been out there for awhile.
bashzor 14y ago
Disappointingly uninteresting answers :(
- somesaba 14y ago
  Agreed
ojbyrne 14y ago
Where's the bias lighting? http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/11/bias-lighting.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/11/bias-lighting.html
pinchyfingers 14y ago
Why doesn't he at least give a nod to Trello when asked about to-do lists? Give your co-founder a plug!
drhowarddrfine 14y ago
This whole q&a is a waste fluff piece. Don't bother to read it.
DominikR 14y ago
Interesting how polarizing Jeff Atwoods views about to-do lists are. I believe that to-do lists are just a symptom of a different problem: Working on something you do not really care about. (sadly, most people have to do this) If you cared about the product or whatever you are creating, and the communication between you and your customer/boss/team is good, your goals would be aligned (in most cases), thus making it very hard to miss a really important task. Probably it would have been better for Jeff to give the advice to try working on stuff you really care about.
- acconrad 14y ago
  > If you cared about the product or whatever you are creating, and the communication between you and your customer/boss/team is good, your goals would be aligned (in most cases), thus making it very hard to miss a really important task. Ugh, this irks me to no end. What if you really care about your product, but there are so many exciting things for you to work on that you simply can't keep track of them all? It's like he's got blinders on to people who don't have the best memory.
helper-method 14y ago
I was really disappointed after reading the article. It was far too short, and contained no useful information. Actually, what is the point of such articles anyhow?
- EnderMB 14y ago
  To push their ads. These articles are perfect for sites like these and sites like LifeHacker probably make a tidy sum of money from the Reddit/HN and previously Digg crowd.

114 points by bussetta 14y ago

I'm the biggest advocate for plowing through every day like a tank but even I would be incredibly handicapped without a proper framework. My system is designed to keep all tasks and tactics out of my head so I can focus on strategy, vision, and execution. Folks who think they don't need a system are lucky, foolish, not all that ambitious, or have others worrying about the big picture of their lives/ companies/ industries.

rohamg 14y ago
Ok- I would add "focused" to that list. If you're a 20 year old working on your first startup 100 hours a week then you may not need a to-do list for life (although you should certainly use one for your development!). For the rest of us, there is way too much that can possibly be done every day - and some framework for prioritization / tracking becomes essential.

columbo 14y ago

Do not under any circumstances keep to-do lists or use to-do apps. If you can't remember the most important things you need to do every day, you should work on that. And if you can't remember something you "need" to do, it's probably not worth doing in the first place. Wow. This is terrible advice. Sure it may work for some people who only have a small handful of tasks but for others who have a set of hectic projects (fix this, rewrite that, call her, email him) or even life goals (write a book, make a video game, learn to speak russian, teach daughter how to fight a bear) todo lists and goalsetting is incredibly important.

mootothemax 14y ago
Very much agreed with you, it's astoundingly bad advice. If you have a day job and work on stuff in your spare time, I don't see how you'll end up in a better place by NOT making task lists.
- stephengillie 14y ago
  Because you can work on those side projects instead of spending time managing task lists.
  - npsimons 14y ago
    If you're spending significant time managing task lists, your todo system sucks, and yeah, you're probably better off tossing it out. For some of us who have problems focusing or remembering (and would otherwise waste that time), a todo list is a life saver, and if you really need it, you find or make one that works for you, and works quickly.
  - RegEx 14y ago
    You're greatly overestimating the time it takes to interact with a good task management app.
    - stephengillie 14y ago
      Some of the other posters in this thread are spending almost an hour per day just writing and revising their todo lists before actually doing anything. That's been my experience too.
      - RegEx 14y ago
        Ah. Well perhaps the todo list at that point is just another means of procrastination; you feel productive because you're playing with productivity software. A todo list won't motivate you, but it can help keep motivated people organized.
  - kamaal 14y ago
    You will anyway, either in your brain on paper. Except that on paper you are more organized, you can see far and accomplish a lot with little stress.
    - stephengillie 14y ago
pan69 14y ago
I'm turning 40 in 10 days and never in my life have I had a dairy or an a to-do list of some kind. I might scribble down a phone number once in a while on a piece of paper, but I think that's about it. I pretty much live by the same philosophy, if I can't remember it, it probably wasn't important (to me). It might be that the "to me" is the key here. :) Edit: Oh, forgot to mention, I run a pretty hectic web development business.
- npsimons 14y ago
  Good for you! But some of us mere mortals who work for other people and have ADD sometimes need a little something to help keep us on track.
  - pan69 14y ago
    Oh. I'm just saying. Some people don't need or want a to-do list. However, I fully agree, Jeff Atwood "giving advice" not to use a to-do list is stupid. It might work for him, doesn't mean it works for other people. My opinion would be that it would either come natural to use a to-do list or not.
- bbwharris 14y ago
  I agree. If you can't remember, it's not a priority for you and that's okay. I operate the same way and have "hectic" schedules too.
  - sciurus 14y ago
    It's probably not okay if that thing you don't remember is a priority for your customers and/or your boss.
  - darkarmani 14y ago
    > I agree. If you can't remember, it's not a priority for you and that's okay. Tell that to airline pilots.
- kamaal 14y ago
  >> I run a pretty hectic web development business. and >>I'm turning 40 in 10 days and never in my life have I had a dairy or an a to-do list of some kind. I really feel sad you underwent so much pain for no reason, while you could have easily avoided it. The point is pain when experienced for a long term becomes normal and doesn't feel like pain anymore. Looks like that is what happened in your case.
crazygringo 14y ago
I agree. I've gone through times in my life where I didn't have a lot of direct responsibilities, and my job was more idea-oriented. And I discovered that not having an agenda or to-do lists was incredibly liberating. But I've also gone through phases of my life where I would have been completely lost without a to-do list, because there are 12 different things to take care of tomorrow, and 8 the day after, etc., and they're non-negotiable, and my memory just isn't that good. If you find yourself in a position in life where you can get away with not having to-do lists, that's fantastic, but to present this as blanket "do not under any circumstances" advice is just... idiotic.
- stephengillie 14y ago
  If my list gets too long for me to hold it all in my head, I'm too busy. Whenever I make a todo list, I forget it and find it weeks later with some items completed and the rest have turned unimportant. How many hectic projects do you (or GP) have going at once? If you have too many to remember everything you have to do for each one, either you're too busy or they're not that urgent. If a life goal (like learning Korean or Javascript or welding) isn't important enough to re-enter your head every so often (weekly, monthly, etc), then it's not important to your life, and tracking it is just wasting your time. I used to use my inbox as my to-do list. After looking at month-old emails, I realized I didn't actually want to do/handle those things, so I archived the emails. Now, I'll write a todo list to sort everything out on paper, relax, then delete it. I'm as productive as I've ever been.
  - maaku 14y ago
    What you describe is an inefficient system. Learning Korean, Javascript, or welding are projects, not next-actions/todos. I'd keep that on a project list I review as often or inoften as I need to, but usually once a week. Looking for a Korean tutor, completing that Javascript tutorial, or checking to see if there are welding lessons at the local community college are proper next actions that could be on a todo list. I suggest looking into a quality system like Getting Things Done. You're on track with some suggestions (using pen and paper to dump tasks and clear up your mind, for example), but could use some refinement.
btilly 14y ago
See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4614676 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4614676 for previous discussion of a blog post by Jeff on this exact topic.
- npsimons 14y ago
  A quote from that previous article I found very apt: Jeff telling me I should stop using todo lists is like an [alcoholic] telling me to stop drinking. No, you should stop drinking, I should drink however much I like because I don't have a problem with it. Different strokes for different folks. It's also funny how Atwood comes in and comments that, hey todo lists suck, but calendars with deadlines and research notebooks (catches for "someday" ideas) are okay. My next question, of course, is does he check his calendar every morning to see what to work on next ;)
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dustincoates 14y ago
It's great advice for people who have the autonomy to set their own to-do lists. If you have other people you're working for, it's difficult to say, "I couldn't remember to do it so I don't think it was worth doing." It reminds me a lot of Mark Cuban's advice of never having a set schedule or meeting times. Great idea in theory and when you get to Atwood's or Cuban's stature it's a lot more implementable.
frou_dh 14y ago
Atwood seems to have a penchant for stating half-baked opinions very forcefully. Todo systems are not just for important things. They're also for mundane things. A few examples from my own: - Get the share of that £xxx bill from a housemate. - Every Tuesday and Friday: Move trash kerbside. - At least weekly: Process any unopened postal mail I have sitting around. - At least monthly: Check my online bank and scan for any unexpected transactions. Why on earth shouldn't things like these be stored and optionally teed up by a system?
- sadga 14y ago
  > - Every Tuesday and Friday: Move trash kerbside. Oh crap, I forgot to do this yesterday!
- jsdalton 14y ago
  The counterargument is that all of these tasks are better suited for a calendar rather than an open-ended to-do list.
  - frou_dh 14y ago
    If I'm managing tasks, I'd rather use a UI designed for managing tasks (whether they be scheduled/due or not). The point is that it's easy to dismiss the usefulness of todo systems if you characterise them as a manual-append-only-bucketlists. But unless you're Doing It Wrong, or using a terrible one, that's simply not the case.
  - kamaal 14y ago
    A calendar is basically a meta to-do list with reminders and deadlines. Most people using calendars for this purpose don't realize that they are actually using to-do lists.
- shanselman 14y ago
  "Strong opinions weakly held" he says: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/strong-opinions-weakly-held.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/strong-opinions-wea...
GimbalLock 14y ago
Between this and Atwood's "Don't learn to code", I can't find a redeeming characteristic of this guy. It seems like he gets his jollies by making people feel bad because they don't code like does or think like he does.
cgh 14y ago
Fully agree. Prioritised to-do lists changed my life. There's a helpful little book, "How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life" by Alan Lakein that lays it all out. Highly recommended, although it dates back to the '70s so some of the work examples used are, er, anachronistic.
prophetjohn 14y ago
As someone constantly context-switching between a job and academia, I can't imagine how I would get by without a todo list. Mine is just a plain text file that is always open in Sublime from a Dropbox folder, but without it, I wouldn't be able to keep straight when that program in operating systems is due or what I have to do for linear algebra when I've been pairing on new story development or database setup automation all day.
shanselman 14y ago
Ya, Jeff's a friend but this is insanity.
mangler 14y ago
"call her"??? Atwood never "calls her"! She calls Atwood! Hey and I don't mean in the Hollywood kind of way - Atwood Da Man!!!
donniezazen 14y ago
Will you forget to write a book if you don't have it in your todo list?
deepGem 14y ago
I think what he means to say is to fix the root cause of bad memory, as against using to-do lists. I tend to agree. According to the book - Moonwalking with Einstein, anyone's memory can be fixed. So there's that :).
PakG1 14y ago
There is a reason why pilot checklists has become an airline industry standard. In a lot of situations, checklists simply do work better than anything else. "Do not under any circumstances" is hyperbole that should not be written. Without that hyperbole, OP can at least get away with saying, "airline work and Jeff Atwood's work is an apples and oranges comparison". http://www.atchistory.org/History/checklst.htm http://www.atchistory.org/History/checklst.htm
nnq 14y ago
It's good advice if you are more of a MAKER (developer/engineer/inventor) and less of a MANAGER or LEADER (being a "software architect", "lead developer", or even just having a very complicated personal life that involves taking care of other people and solving other non-autonomous people's problems - like just having a bunch of needy kids - can turn you from a MAKER to a MANAGER even if your "job" is just to brilliantly code stuff up) I think there's a metric, some kind of sweetspot for (brain capacity e.g. working memory times "power to focus" times mental stability)/(things to manage times how unpredictable and risky the managed things can be), after which you need to use external "crutches for your mind" ...but it's entirely your choice if you choose to live in the zone where you can do everything with your mind or you need to expand beyond it (or you might just have a very chaotic mind to begin with and need the crutches for everything).
mjwalshe 14y ago
And some of us (especialy dyslexics) have poor short term memory.

objclxt 14y ago

Did the title for the submission not have enough room, or is there some other reason "Cofounder", which is what the original LifeHacker title reads, got replaced with "founder" here?

bostonpete 14y ago
The link itself includes "founder", not "cofounder". Maybe he later updated the title...
- lucisferre 14y ago
  I really hate the prolific use of the term cofounder around here. Everyone who "cofounds" a business is a "founder". Otherwise you're the "sole founder" if you honestly feel like making a big deal about it. A founder is a founder, whether there is one or many.
  - MattSayar 14y ago
    Exactly, nobody calls America's Founding Fathers the "Cofounding Fathers" of the nation.
    - corin_ 14y ago
      But you also wouldn't call any one of them "the founder of the nation", it works because the inclusion of "fathers" already states that they are a group.
      - MattSayar 14y ago
        Of course you wouldn't say THE founder, you'd say A founder

dysoco 14y ago

Great, now I'm excited about that "awesome next big thing".

corford 14y ago
Can't find the post now (think it was on HN or Ars Technica a few months back) but I'm fairly certain "the next big thing" Jeff's working on is re-imagining how a web forum should work. I hope he cracks it - vbulletin and friends need to die!
- malyk 14y ago
  Jeff posted a question in the Programmers Symposium of the Ars Technica forum asking how the members there felt about forum software. Personally, I think the ars forum works perfectly. I can't stand newsgroups, for instance...i'd be in heaven if everything were vbulletin. But maybe Jeff has something neat up his sleave!
  - TillE 14y ago
    Hopefully. I've been looking into options for fostering a small community around a new videogame, and I hate them all. Traditional forum software is much too heavy (registration, navigation), Vanilla is just strange, a subreddit is an inappropriate format (voting and the lack of long-term threads are a turnoff), and there's really not much else. It's something that's long overdue for a shakeup.
rapind 14y ago
I heard he was working on a to-do list app.
iamgopal 14y ago
I am working on www.inqzin.com, exactly the thing he opposed .

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

onosendai 14y ago

No operating system I know of, no matter how many gigabytes of memory you have, can remember more than one copied item at a time. That's ridiculous! Maybe I'm misunderstanding the functionality he's talking about, but hasn't KDE's Klipper (http://userbase.kde.org/Klipper http://userbase.kde.org/Klipper) and GNOME's Glipper (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glipper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glipper) solved this problem long ago? I'm sure there are other clipboard managers for other OS'es as well.

mikeevans 14y ago
I think he means built-in to the OS. He probably uses something like the ones you mentioned, as he claims that the "only must-have app I need is a global clipboard history application."
- larsberg 14y ago
  Yeah, I had a similar reaction. I had been using the dual Office/VS clipboard ring since back in ~2002, but I forgot that it was only for applications with Office integration and not OS-wide.
donrhummy 14y ago
He uses Windows so I assume he doesn't know much about Linux Distros. You're correct, Klipper was the first thing I thought of as well. I assume his OS experiences are: Mac, Windows, iOS, Android judging by his info posted.
pinchyfingers 14y ago
First thing I thought of was the Emacs kill-ring. Emacs has been around since the 70's, so it's not like the concept hasn't been out there for awhile.

bashzor 14y ago

Disappointingly uninteresting answers :(

somesaba 14y ago
Agreed

ojbyrne 14y ago

Where's the bias lighting? http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/11/bias-lighting.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/11/bias-lighting.html

pinchyfingers 14y ago

Why doesn't he at least give a nod to Trello when asked about to-do lists? Give your co-founder a plug!

drhowarddrfine 14y ago

This whole q&a is a waste fluff piece. Don't bother to read it.

DominikR 14y ago

Interesting how polarizing Jeff Atwoods views about to-do lists are. I believe that to-do lists are just a symptom of a different problem: Working on something you do not really care about. (sadly, most people have to do this) If you cared about the product or whatever you are creating, and the communication between you and your customer/boss/team is good, your goals would be aligned (in most cases), thus making it very hard to miss a really important task. Probably it would have been better for Jeff to give the advice to try working on stuff you really care about.

acconrad 14y ago
> If you cared about the product or whatever you are creating, and the communication between you and your customer/boss/team is good, your goals would be aligned (in most cases), thus making it very hard to miss a really important task. Ugh, this irks me to no end. What if you really care about your product, but there are so many exciting things for you to work on that you simply can't keep track of them all? It's like he's got blinders on to people who don't have the best memory.

helper-method 14y ago

I was really disappointed after reading the article. It was far too short, and contained no useful information. Actually, what is the point of such articles anyhow?

EnderMB 14y ago
To push their ads. These articles are perfect for sites like these and sites like LifeHacker probably make a tidy sum of money from the Reddit/HN and previously Digg crowd.