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The only thing that's ever worked is a piece of paper and a pen. Never really look back more than a week. Not sophisticated, but it moves me forward.
by specproc 8mo ago
The only thing that's ever worked is a piece of paper and a pen. Never really look back more than a week.
Not sophisticated, but it moves me forward.
- ozim 8mo agoRealizing graveyard of good intentions is not that valuable is one of the most important things that we have to learn. Best to just cut it and work on what is ahead.
- item007 8mo agoTotally agree — learning to prune the “good intentions” pile is a real productivity upgrade. Out of curiosity: do you have a simple rule for what you cut (age-based, relevance to current projects, or “if it didn’t turn into action, delete”)?
- ozim 8mo agoLast 2 or 3 years I do end of the year pruning. Stuff that is relevant for things I am currently busy with are recent so like last couple weeks. Stuff that I don’t remember touching in those weeks gets deleted.
- item007 8mo agoThat’s a great pruning heuristic. Is this mostly about notes/links, or do you apply the same rule to other inputs too (email, chat threads, bookmarked posts, PDFs, repos, etc.)? For the non-note stuff, do you have a “recently touched” equivalent, or do you rely on different rules (e.g. archiving/search for email, starred threads for chat, etc.)?
- item007 8mo agoTotally get it — paper forces focus and has near-zero overhead. Out of curiosity, is the “one-week horizon” a deliberate constraint to avoid backlog guilt, or just what naturally works for you?
- specproc 8mo agoJust what "works" for me, I guess.