Let's consider the alternatives to to-do lists. They are 1) remember everything without writing it down, or 2) rely on being reminded about anything important by something or someone else. I don't think I've missed any, and it's pretty obvious to me why 1 and 2 are bad plans... so obvious that I'm confused about why so many people blog or write books about the concept.
I also saw a recent HN comment that todo lists are basically suitable only for low-level ICs and that the truly successful don't use them. I wondered if that was really true and, well, here we are.
[edit]: I think there's also an issue that people can't self-regulate very well, so when they fail, they blame whatever system they use. So I wanted a clear signpost I could point to make it utterly clear that successful people do use these things (and, therefore, that any misgivings have other roots).
A lot of the criticisms I’m seeing here are how you approach your todo list. If you look at it as a script for your whole life of course it’s going to fail, you’ll spend more time setting it up and consulting it than doing anything with it, and it’ll quickly get swamped with irrelevant details. If you use it as a ‘living document’ that jogs your memory for what needs to get done it’s going to work out better. Often times just putting something on paper helps organize your thoughts around something and commit it to memory.
He's not even saying that to-do lists don't help. He's saying that if they do help you, you're broken.
Congratulations on having never forgotten something important, I guess? I apologize for being a mere mortal who gets distracted and forgets things sometimes.
It’s a part of the “everything you do must be awesome” movement. They forget that most people have a job and a personal life to take care of. Ticking items in a todo list is perfectly fine. Also I had a feeling their main argument is that they’re getting overwhelmed by the list itself. I guess it can be a problem, but the solution is to learn to let your list go sometimes. You must re-assess it regularly.
> Also I had a feeling their main argument is that they’re getting overwhelmed by the list itself. I guess it can be a problem, but the solution is to learn to let your list go sometimes.
Yeah, near the end:
> Here's my challenge. If you can't wake up every day and, using your 100% original equipment God-given organic brain, come up with the three most important things you need to do that day – then you should seriously work on fixing that. I don't mean install another app, or read more productivity blogs and books. You have to figure out what's important to you and what motivates you; ask yourself why that stuff isn't gnawing at you enough to make you get it done. Fix that.
He's kinda indirectly saying you should have a daily to-do list, started anew instead of ever-growing, just avoiding using the term "to-do list".
Amusing little aside, I use "to-do list" instead of "todo list" because I can't help read it as the Spanish "todo", which would translate to "everything list". That would be too overwhelming a list.
Articles like this leave me wondering how they really live their lives. I don't know if I smell BS but most people who use todo lists aren't todo-ing their whole day, nor wasting time adding things to it they never do. I've also never felt the need to download multiple apps. My calendar app works for long-term and paper & pen can handle the rest.
I think the articles you link are mistaken and that OP is correct. This is quote from one of them says it all: "I've tried to maintain to-do lists at various points in my life."
Of course don't do that. Todolists are there to help you remember things, not to be "maintained" or to provide you with a sense of "achievement" or whatnot. They are basically the same thing as a shopping list. Nothing more, nothing less.
The first step to actually use a todolist is not to use fancy Todolist apps. Just use Notepad or whatever simple text editor that can do cut/paste.
I completely agree (I'm the post author). I found a simple text file works well for me. I think what's most important is that I can get in the habit of using it every day. Most else is just window-dressing.
I use them at work, I have the habit of looking at my todolist when I have nothing to do, or to decide what to do next. Actually we use a ticket system that could act as a todolist, but it's a mess for "local" reasons.
This remembers me that tickets systems are just glorified todolists - and maybe they suffer from the same feature bloat as todolist apps. Although I acknowledge ticket systems are team tools, so it is a whole different game.
Yes, and learn to let the list go sometimes. Re-assess it, toss it away and make another one, etc. It’s much better to consciously ignore/forget about some tasks (because they have become unimportant) than to unwillingly forget something important.
That's why I don't like them having a 'done' column (or bucket, state, whatever) - they should be at most archived, if not just outright deleted, IMO. Just to-do, maybe optionally doing, and gone. Gone for whatever reason. And then you're never tempted to play the silly game of 'add task I already did so that I can tick it off'.
Yes. My Todolist is a textfile with one horizontal bar (=====). Above it are the things to do, below the thing that I did. When something gets urgent I move the item just above the bar. When I do something I just move the line under the bar.
I do that because sometimes I don't remember if I did something or not. Or because I need to add details about how I did it (or why I couldn't do it, sometimes). I have this additional rule that, when a task needs extra info, they are indented right after the item line.
Actually the whole thing is one section of a VimWiki file, but I use none of the features of the plugin for this. It does have single-keystroke checkboxes; I use that for checklists, which are sort of "repeatable todolists".
There is nothing bad about choosing to to do some tasks. You have infinite things you can do and only finite time -> conclusion is that you will only do an infinitesimal amount of what could theoretically be done.
That makes it infinitely more important that you do the right thing, and so you should be ruthless when you make your choices.
Everyone has their own way to be effective and productive, my opinion follows.
TODO-lists are useful when using them for what they are good for:
1. mini-planning the upcoming work,
2. tracking what you've done (the ticked boxes), and
3. tracking what needs to be done to complete the main task (the unticked boxes).
Putting this information into the calendar? No, totally wrong place.
Using some app? Clumsy and annoying and easy to get distracted... but sure, if it works for you.
I'd say just use a text file with whatever format is OK for you. Or pen + paper.
I have TODO-lists with tasks with a time-span of a few weeks to many-a-day subtasks that I plan ahead of time so I know what to do next.
In my opinion, that's the important part: knowing what to do next.
If you don't know what to do next, you have to stop to figure this out. Hence the TODO-lists.
Besides, for me, this switching of mode from executing to planning/analyzing breaks the flow of the task I was doing. I have to go into another kind of mind-state. So I try to plan ahead and then just execute, it's easier and more fun to just keep the flow going for a longer time.
Usually my subtask planning for things I'm familiar with is more tactical and I just throw it in as I go (I'm used to this now), but for unfamiliar things I have to stop and analyze things up front. Of course situations change and then I just go back and modify the tasks and plans. But at some point, a clear path forward emerges. Then I take it.
>> I also saw a recent HN comment that todo lists are basically suitable only for low-level ICs and that the truly successful don't use them. I wondered if that was really true and, well, here we are.
Would love the link if you can find it.
I know around ~10 very successful people (high net worth business owners / C level positions), including some close family members, and they all use TODOs / notes extensively in their personal life and at work. Some have personal assistants that serve a similar function (and they rely heavily on them). We had a joke for one of them that he makes notes to look at other notes (based somewhat in reality - it was a fridge note to look at the longer note on his desk). Many of the older ones have a daily journal where they copy / delete uncompleted tasks to the next day I can't imagine any of them functioning without a TODO system.
They do also heavily use calanders and sometimes the TODO lists and calendars blend together, but it's not a mutually exclusive thing like the original post's links would leave one to believe.
The last article you link is the only one that makes some good points IMO and it's more of an argument for an even better task list if anything.
> Here's my challenge. If you can't wake up every day and, using your 100% original equipment God-given organic brain, come up with the three most important things you need to do that day – then you should seriously work on fixing that. I don't mean install another app, or read more productivity blogs and books. You have to figure out what's important to you and what motivates you; ask yourself why that stuff isn't gnawing at you enough to make you get it done. Fix that.
I think most people don't have the money to go on a years-long soul searching trip while getting nothing done in the meantime. I dislike that trend of saying "you aren't a perfectly functionning human? Time to go on therapy and focus on self-improvement for a few years". I work with half-broken systems all the time, I'm one of those. And it works! I'm able to do stuff, be kinda productive at work, spend good time with family and friends, and even find a bit of time to work on myself to get better.
1. You spend too much time optimizing your to-do list.
2. You realize you are spending too much time optimizing your to-do list and you give up in frustration because you feel like you don't get your actual work done.
With a text file, it's a free for all, you don't feel obligated to keep it clean, when you have to make a note you just "do it".
I am confused. The assumption here seems to be that people are using to-do lists to... schedule their lives or something? Otherwise what you said makes zero sense to me.
No, it’s a reminder from your past self. For example: at any given time, I’m usually supervising 6 to 10 students at the same time. In one day I might have 4 or 5 meetings, and I might promise, to each of them, to do something until our next meeting. But in the next two days I have other stuff to do, so I’ll only get to it a few days later. Each of these promises is important to me, and I don’t want to let them down, but expecting myself to remember each of them is a self-sabotage. I need a todo list. Also saying that “if I forgot is because it wasn’t really important” would make me an awful supervisor.
Is it obvious? I forget many things but the rarely ever the most urgent/important tasks i have to do right now.
I need a calendar and checklists for sure but when i write to do lists they inevitably end up being things i'd never forget mixed in with a clutter of tasks that were never really important enough to get around to doing.
I don't use hand written or electronic lists or reminder systems. You might say I use a biological memory system but I don't see it in any way as a list. I'm aware that I have tasks, and they have deadlines, priorities, effort levels, complexities, dependencies, relationships, and so forth. But it is so alien to me to put them in an app or on paper. I've tried, since others swear by it. But it makes as much sense to me as writing down the words I know so that I can later use them in the right order at the right times. It's a huge reduction in dimensionality for no purpose.
The discourse is often that there are two groups
1. those that use todo lists and are more productive than if they didn't
2. those that don't use todo lists but could be more productive if they did
I genuinely feel there is a third group, those that do not use todo lists and would not be any more productive if they did. I don't avoid them, I've tried them with their doctrines because they were recommended by others. Didn't add anything at all. I have no 'todo pain points', rarely if ever feel I've forgotten something or would have been aided with a 'list'. I have a good memory/recall capacity but not especially good so it is not that.
I do create 'lists' to add memory, but these are along the lines of the 40 items of grocery to buy, or clicking 'add to list' on Netflix. Not 'todo' lists as such.
I couldn't be more different. I probably wouldn't even get out of bed each day unless I wrote down what to eat for Breakfast the night before.
To mentally keep track of your entire life, from "in 1 years time I need to get my boiler serviced" to buying birthday gifts on time to completing school/college assignments on time without ever forgetting anything is from point of my view an astounding achievement.
If I were to follow such a system I would be constantly racked with anxiety that I had promised someone I would do something and then forgotten about it, or needed to pay a bill, return a library book, eat some food before it went off, etc. etc. Perhaps I just have a terrible memory.
I have a todo app that I wrote myself, every month I add things that I need to pay and other stuff that I need to do. I used to pay the bills all in advance, but here in Brazil leave money in some Fintech apps are giving quite the interest, so I hold on to the money until the day I have to pay the bill. The app has been very helpful so far...
Is email really comparable ? The todo examples quoted were self assigned tasks, emails are usually things you need to do for other people. I can get on board with the email task management, creating personal to-do lists is just not my style.
OP here. When I compare email to, for example, being an IC and using JIRA/Trello, there seems to be a natural analogy in that there's an inbox of items you have to respond to.
And more power to you for knowing what works for you and what doesn't. I found that to-do lists work for me, and I'm glad you know what works for you.
TODO lists are the cornerstone of my ability to get practically any task that can't be done immediately and finished today done at some point.
But it's important to ensure those lists are kept somewhere visible at the start of the day. Also constant updating, rewriting, and reprioritizing I find are key to their effectiveness.
I too wouldn’t get anything done and would forget everything if it weren’t for the Reminders app on my iPhone.
In the past I tried more GTD focused apps with contexts, inboxes, start dates, due dates etc. but I’d spend more time tinkering with my todo’s than actually doing them.
Now I just dump something into the app with a due date of today. At the end of the day if I cannot do it, I move it to a sensible day I know I can do it, or if I still don’t know, tomorrow.
Also great for keeping track of repeating tasks like home maintenance.
Agree with the article - the take presented in the first articles are a joke right?
They remind of the mind numbingly arrogant articles about UHNWI's that didn't have smartphones from a while back - well duh, they didn't because they had several servants that fixed their calendar, printed things, arranged meetings etc.
Same with the "no tech" Silicon Valley trend that's an incredible privilege not applicable to 99% of regular people.
You need a place to mentally park various things you need to do, ie. a todo list in todays complicated and advanced society - pay this bill, buy this thing, call this person etc.
Complexity falls with privilege.
You can't simply remember them unless living a very simple life.
Maybe some very rich person can have a PA, live in the woods, or the hermit geniuses of 200 years ago worked very differently on paper and in notebooks, but today a simple todo list is absolutely needed unless living alone and with very, very few responsibilities.
I don't know anyone, like at all that doesn't have some kind of todo list, ranging from a simple unsorted list, to multiple lists to post it notes in your apartment.
>I don't know anyone, like at all that doesn't have some kind of todo list, ranging from a simple unsorted list, to multiple lists to post it notes in your apartment.
i don't use a todo list. i either remember to do something or i don't. i have tried to use todo lists before but they have never worked. i just forget to check it, or i just don't end up doing the things written on it.
But don't you use some physical system then? Setting a post-it, putting bills in a stack in sight, opening a tab and not closing it etc. to alert you of something?
I mean i'm impressed if you can do everything stream-of-consciousness, but i also own both a company and have a family and could probably get away without lists when i was 22 without such distractions, but now i need to do at least 10+ things everyday, i can't remember all of that.
I would love to simplify my life but it doesn't seem feasible..
I hope you don’t mind the question, it’s not meant in a bad way, it’s pure curiosity and surprise: do you have a high-level, high-paying position and/or a family (kids)? Meaning, critical things that are negatively affected by the things you might simply not do?
Thank you for the reply, it's not really about right or wrong, it's just different. I guess in one way or another you will find yourself at the situation where you have too much to remember, and you might open a new text file.
> The take presented in the first articles are a joke right?
Yes, very much so. This is my first time writing for a large audience and I’m still learning how to balance the tone. My true views are at the bottom of the post and are aligned with yours.
Thanks for the reminder. I thought the juxtaposition of those links with people like Leonardo da Vinci and Paul Graham would be enough to make the sarcasm clear. But alas.
Interesting. Personally i think i also think it has to do with the nature of those services, it's just too simple in essence, the overhead gets obvious.
People just revert to a simple piece of paper, a txt file, as i did until i for some reason started using the Reminders app in osx/ios - the first actual app that i have used for more than a year. Stupidly simple and a part of the system already so makes sense.
Nowadays, I keep my TODOs in the codebase, it's pretty easy to browse through code to find what isn't implemented yet, also it became really popular lately and a lot of plugins for better management appeared.
For real life TODOs, I use a simple cli to keep them in a database that I share via Google Drive with my phone.
Cal Newport and Shane Parrish, in a discussion on the Knowledge Project podcast, talked unfavorably about to-do lists. They favored scheduling time to perform the needed tasks in a daily calendar.
I tried that calendaring system a few times. It did not work for me. To-do lists are easy, comfortable, familiar. They may not work for millionaires. They work for me.
Setting times is fine, but my approach is I have a list of 4-5 things to do written the night before, and knowing how much time I have in the morning, midday and afternoon as well as the energy I still have left at different parts of the day I say whether they’re done before work, at lunch, or after work.
I’m really not sure on the distinction people are using between to-do lists and these other approaches - they all seem like to-do lists just formatted differently because people work differently.
I've gotten a lot of productivity out of todo lists.
I've tried Cal Newport's calendaring system as well, which is more or less a bullet journal + timeline and I thought it was somewhat helpful, but in the end it was too tedious.
The thing that doesn't work for me is that If I don't finish something within a timeframe, its not worth context switching. Other times it made no sense to take on a task at a specific time.
Sometimes its just better to have a simple list and wing the rest of it. Don't overcomplicate your life if you don't have to.
It's intreasting in taking on new responsibilities I heard Cal talk about how this system wasn't working for him and he had infact switched to Trello for this.
So while he does still use this system, it shows that the system breaks if your work doesn't fit being scheduled that way.
All in all, the take away really is that a lot of generic productivity advice, is bad if it gets really specific about the tool, because you have to find what works for you personally and for the type of work you have and i think sometimes even that is different tools at different times.
OP here. I agree, and I hope your take-away from my post is that extremely successful people do use to-do lists. To quote myself, "People are different enough that there is no universal system." What works for you is what works for you, and you should use it unabashedly.
The calendar-as-todo-list advice might be suitable for busy managers, but seems quite unsuitable for engineers, scientists and any kind of „makers“ who can rarely tell how long solving a problem will take.
Some reasons why can be found in Paul Grahams well-known essay „Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule“. Another one is getting the various random demands occurring in life out of the head so that it is free for difficult things that require full attention.
If you want to use calendars, the idea of the „unschedule“ from „The Now Habit“ might be more suitable for makers: Only put meetings, chores and actual freetime into your calendar so that it becomes obvious when there are blocks of time for focused work.
I find them situationally very useful. I'm very much an on-again-off-again todo:er, depending on what life throws my way. If I have enough ideas to require them I'll use them, if I don't then I don't. I don't spend a lot of time making sure they're in some sense perfect, it's just a tool, if it gets the job done it's fine. If there's too much junk, I'll delete some of it.
If I'm inspired I may have many more ideas than I have time to realistically implement. Putting them in a todo list helps me let go of them until I have the time to put them into action.
I also believe in separating thinking from doing, spending time away from my projects thinking seems to consistently produce solid new takes, but that is rarely the case if I'm actually at the keyboard working. I get too much tunnel vision and just spin my wheels.
This in part also to allow me to be a present in my relationships, to work at work. If I had to juggle all my ideas in my head, I'd be aloof and incommunicable most of the time.
I find them to be magic little time capsules, for when I write them and then find them six months to a year latter, they let me know what I have not gotten done yet...
I do. They serve me, not master me. Ad hoc. Some last a long time, some are transient. Often helpful if I momentarily accumulate a lot of TODOs, or brainstorming some, and the act of typing them out, and seeing on screen, helps me remember them and prioritize.
Key is make it more of a win than lose. Thus I bias to plain text. Either in a notepad type app on mobile, or in vim on Mac or Linux. Sometimes in a plain paper notebook with a ballpoint ink pen -- helpful if I want to sketch out some UI mockup, or, a rough 1st stab at a diagram-amenable concept, like software architecture.
I feel the problem space has been fairly solved for decades if not centuries. But use what works best for you.
OP here. I think this is completely correct. And I ended up using the same system as you -- plain text in Vim. For me, it's super low-friction and I see it all the time, so it's easy to make it habitual.
agreed. and in vim's case I love having one tool I can use on a local machine, or over ssh to a remote server. one tool for coding, tech docs, notes, book writing etc. and its free and its open etc
I like how the counterpoints for to-do lists are things that can be fixed by process. Reviewing list often, closing things you won't do, grouping by importance, categorizing by context, etc.
The one recurring alternative presented to to-dos seems to be scheduling (ironic given that a counter argument of to-do lists is that its hard to estimate time). Schedule rather than to-do seems applicable to such a narrow band of people whose life is deterministic. The overhead of rescheduling everything that I can't do when the alert pops would be ridiculous.
I understand that they might not work for some, they do just fine for me.
A major cost for long lists (which is most honest todo lists) is reviewing the items to see what needs doing and reprioritizing today. It's highly distracting (thinking about lots of things you aren't going to address today), draining, and highly inefficient (again, you spend time and energy for nothing - you aren't going to act on most items).
1. Use a hierarchical todo list, an outline, essentially. Then you can skip entire sections ('paint garage' - not this week!).
2. For each entry, add a 'review-by' date. It means that you can forget about the entry until that date. Set the dates realistically - you have only so much time and energy, so don't bother dating the tasks before you realistially might have time for them (e.g., after the big project). To review your list, just sort by the review-by date and read the items dated today. If you do it realistically, that shouldn't be much more than what's possible today, and you can safely and comfortably forget the rest, knowing they won't slip through the cracks.
An alternative to using Emacs is EasyOrg [1] which makes org mode a dash simpler to use and with a useful agenda and calendar view. Not supporting full org mode, but plenty of power for Todo list and project planning.
While I greatly admire Emacs (which I've used) and Org mode (which always on my list of possibilities; it just doesn't suit current needs), lots of outliners can expand and collapse with a keystroke. That's not what makes Org special.
Call me kiddish then because I love opening up main.org and going thru all the TODOs and tabbing them open and closed periodically. What is the special sauce?
I agree with your point, the issue becomes that while you want to write everything down so you don't forget it, if that item is months away from being relevant, you have a large cost of having to read/see it constantly and figure out it's not important, multiple this by a large amount of tasks and it soon becomes overwhelming.
The method I try to use, is am feeling a weekly review where I review everything and check in with myself to see how I am feeling, what i got done and if i am on track, from there I can choose the things that are relevant to this week and ignore all the other tasks.
So when it comes to managing things on a day to day basis, my brain only has to deal with stuff coming up this week, safe in the knowledge that I have taken the time to think through everything else.
> 1. Use a hierarchical todo list, an outline, essentially. Then you can skip entire sections ('paint garage' - not this week!).
I use org mode; skip and/or fold/unfold entire sections/subsections at a time. Very useful for having an outline, hit 'TAB' on an item to expand, hit 'TAB' twice to expand all subsections, hit 'TAB' three times to fold everything again.
Use 'ALT' and up-arrow/down-arrow to move items up down the hierarchy. Very simple to use and remember.
Every day before logging off from work, I write down my todos for the following work day on a blank piece of paper. I close my laptop, tuck the paper in a folder and put both in closet away from sight.
Has worked really well getting things done and disconnecting from work.
The problem with typical TODO lists is common to many productivity apps: one size does not fit all. People with different interests, lifestyles, job functions, and organizational constraints will need radically different workflows and software to support those workflows.
For example, in my day job at a big tech company, I am often blocked from doing some TODO item because I'm waiting for someone else to do something (code review, ACL approval, respond to support ticket, etc). So I don't want my TODO app to show me items that are currently blocked. This constraint in my workflow is mostly just an artifact of the way big tech companies operate, not a universal feature of work. Other professionals doubtless face other constraints.
I have a theory that the solution to this problem is for professionals (not just software engineers!) to write their own productivity apps. With a good framework, it is easy to write quite useful mini-apps that reflect your specific needs - think a spreadsheet, but with much nicer, custom user interface. I built such a framework for my own needs, and I am slowly rolling it out to the world, check it out if you're interested:
https://webwidgets.io/
> I have a theory that the solution to this problem is for professionals (not just software engineers!) to write their own productivity apps
I agree with this in theory -- I love tools, tooling, and composition-based frameworks to roll your own tools. And I enjoy what you've done so far, especially the spaced repetition character system, which reminds me of my days learning kanji.
For me, at least, the risks I foresee are (1) I would be on the hook for maintaining the app if something goes wrong, (2) I would have to spend a lot of work making it look nice enough that it wouldn't bug me, and (3) I don't know if it would be flexible enough to accommodate changes in my workflow in the future.
I would love to see, for example, a tutorial on how to roll you own to-do app in 10 minutes and deploy it.
I am most productive when I start the day looking at yesterday's list and re-organizing it. By the end if I don't get too distracted I end up being more productive...
Feels like what there needs to be is a meta-system to evaluate different productivity methods for X amount of weeks each and then compare their effectiveness. Knowing such a framework would be more useful than individual techniques, of which there are countless.
Todo lists are tools, like a hammer. Hammers can be used to end life, but also to build houses. The tool is rarely good or bad in itself, but either suitable or unsuitable to do a certain job.
In my experience, todo lists are suitable for keeping you focused on a set of tasks. However, they seem not so good are being a complete system of task scheduling. Over time they often fill up and have no clearly defined mechanism of clearing not-so-relevant-anymore tasks.
Therefore, I create a new todo list every day. First, I write down what I think, that I will get done today. Second I take a look at yesterdays list and decide for every open task if I will get it done today or if it should go to the backlog or graveyard. As the final step I look at the backlog, but mostly decide to just go with the list I already have.
This procedure helps me to focus and get daily tasks done. What it doesn't support is prioritization. To accomplish that I tend to reflect every few weeks on what I should be doing more and what I should be doing less and changing my calendar accordingly.
So I use todo lists primarily for daily focus, instead of expecting them to solve hard priority issues.
MS TODO has been a decent entry in this space in terms of productivity at work where MS 365 is in use. Flagging an email gets it to appear in Todo and it has a useful "My Day" feature with suggestions for the day.
It felt like a natural next step after using emails as a Todo list as the post mentions.
One reason why I prefer the web version of Outlook is that you can select text in an email and get a context menu that adds that text to your TODO along with a link back to the original email.
For me, nearly all my new tasks come in via email and if I pass them on for someone else to resolve I will usually hear back via email too, so it makes 100% sense to have my todo list sitting next to my inbox. Drag and drop reordering, easy checkoff with saved history of completed tasks and near-seamless calendar integration make all this a no-brainer for me. I don't generally like MS products, but they got it right on this one.
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[ 7.1 ms ] story [ 319 ms ] thread- https://blog.codinghorror.com/todont/
- https://hbr.org/2012/01/to-do-lists-dont-work
- https://blog.frantic.im/all/todo-apps-are-meant-for-robots/
I also saw a recent HN comment that todo lists are basically suitable only for low-level ICs and that the truly successful don't use them. I wondered if that was really true and, well, here we are.
[edit]: I think there's also an issue that people can't self-regulate very well, so when they fail, they blame whatever system they use. So I wanted a clear signpost I could point to make it utterly clear that successful people do use these things (and, therefore, that any misgivings have other roots).
He's not even saying that to-do lists don't help. He's saying that if they do help you, you're broken.
Congratulations on having never forgotten something important, I guess? I apologize for being a mere mortal who gets distracted and forgets things sometimes.
Yeah, near the end:
> Here's my challenge. If you can't wake up every day and, using your 100% original equipment God-given organic brain, come up with the three most important things you need to do that day – then you should seriously work on fixing that. I don't mean install another app, or read more productivity blogs and books. You have to figure out what's important to you and what motivates you; ask yourself why that stuff isn't gnawing at you enough to make you get it done. Fix that.
He's kinda indirectly saying you should have a daily to-do list, started anew instead of ever-growing, just avoiding using the term "to-do list".
Amusing little aside, I use "to-do list" instead of "todo list" because I can't help read it as the Spanish "todo", which would translate to "everything list". That would be too overwhelming a list.
I envy people who can remember all their obligations with storing them somewhere. I am not one of those people.
Of course don't do that. Todolists are there to help you remember things, not to be "maintained" or to provide you with a sense of "achievement" or whatnot. They are basically the same thing as a shopping list. Nothing more, nothing less.
The first step to actually use a todolist is not to use fancy Todolist apps. Just use Notepad or whatever simple text editor that can do cut/paste.
This remembers me that tickets systems are just glorified todolists - and maybe they suffer from the same feature bloat as todolist apps. Although I acknowledge ticket systems are team tools, so it is a whole different game.
I do that because sometimes I don't remember if I did something or not. Or because I need to add details about how I did it (or why I couldn't do it, sometimes). I have this additional rule that, when a task needs extra info, they are indented right after the item line.
Actually the whole thing is one section of a VimWiki file, but I use none of the features of the plugin for this. It does have single-keystroke checkboxes; I use that for checklists, which are sort of "repeatable todolists".
That makes it infinitely more important that you do the right thing, and so you should be ruthless when you make your choices.
TODO-lists are useful when using them for what they are good for:
1. mini-planning the upcoming work,
2. tracking what you've done (the ticked boxes), and
3. tracking what needs to be done to complete the main task (the unticked boxes).
Putting this information into the calendar? No, totally wrong place. Using some app? Clumsy and annoying and easy to get distracted... but sure, if it works for you.
I'd say just use a text file with whatever format is OK for you. Or pen + paper.
I have TODO-lists with tasks with a time-span of a few weeks to many-a-day subtasks that I plan ahead of time so I know what to do next.
In my opinion, that's the important part: knowing what to do next.
If you don't know what to do next, you have to stop to figure this out. Hence the TODO-lists.
Besides, for me, this switching of mode from executing to planning/analyzing breaks the flow of the task I was doing. I have to go into another kind of mind-state. So I try to plan ahead and then just execute, it's easier and more fun to just keep the flow going for a longer time.
Usually my subtask planning for things I'm familiar with is more tactical and I just throw it in as I go (I'm used to this now), but for unfamiliar things I have to stop and analyze things up front. Of course situations change and then I just go back and modify the tasks and plans. But at some point, a clear path forward emerges. Then I take it.
They are a list of some common challenges when working with todo lists. But what working method doesn’t have challenges?
I could compose a list of various challenges of working from home. It does not mean working from home, “doesn’t work”.
That said, “assess a corpse using his finger as a unit of measurement.” Was a to-do item.
Would love the link if you can find it.
I know around ~10 very successful people (high net worth business owners / C level positions), including some close family members, and they all use TODOs / notes extensively in their personal life and at work. Some have personal assistants that serve a similar function (and they rely heavily on them). We had a joke for one of them that he makes notes to look at other notes (based somewhat in reality - it was a fridge note to look at the longer note on his desk). Many of the older ones have a daily journal where they copy / delete uncompleted tasks to the next day I can't imagine any of them functioning without a TODO system.
They do also heavily use calanders and sometimes the TODO lists and calendars blend together, but it's not a mutually exclusive thing like the original post's links would leave one to believe.
The last article you link is the only one that makes some good points IMO and it's more of an argument for an even better task list if anything.
> Here's my challenge. If you can't wake up every day and, using your 100% original equipment God-given organic brain, come up with the three most important things you need to do that day – then you should seriously work on fixing that. I don't mean install another app, or read more productivity blogs and books. You have to figure out what's important to you and what motivates you; ask yourself why that stuff isn't gnawing at you enough to make you get it done. Fix that.
I think most people don't have the money to go on a years-long soul searching trip while getting nothing done in the meantime. I dislike that trend of saying "you aren't a perfectly functionning human? Time to go on therapy and focus on self-improvement for a few years". I work with half-broken systems all the time, I'm one of those. And it works! I'm able to do stuff, be kinda productive at work, spend good time with family and friends, and even find a bit of time to work on myself to get better.
1. You spend too much time optimizing your to-do list. 2. You realize you are spending too much time optimizing your to-do list and you give up in frustration because you feel like you don't get your actual work done.
With a text file, it's a free for all, you don't feel obligated to keep it clean, when you have to make a note you just "do it".
Either way, I cannot relate at all
Isn't that what a to-do list is—just a reminder of anything important by something else?
"What are you doing?"
"I'm writing down that I promised you that book so I can get it for you for your birthday."
"Oh, that's awesome. Thank you."
I need a calendar and checklists for sure but when i write to do lists they inevitably end up being things i'd never forget mixed in with a clutter of tasks that were never really important enough to get around to doing.
The discourse is often that there are two groups 1. those that use todo lists and are more productive than if they didn't 2. those that don't use todo lists but could be more productive if they did
I genuinely feel there is a third group, those that do not use todo lists and would not be any more productive if they did. I don't avoid them, I've tried them with their doctrines because they were recommended by others. Didn't add anything at all. I have no 'todo pain points', rarely if ever feel I've forgotten something or would have been aided with a 'list'. I have a good memory/recall capacity but not especially good so it is not that.
I do create 'lists' to add memory, but these are along the lines of the 40 items of grocery to buy, or clicking 'add to list' on Netflix. Not 'todo' lists as such.
I'm interested if anyone else feels similar.
To mentally keep track of your entire life, from "in 1 years time I need to get my boiler serviced" to buying birthday gifts on time to completing school/college assignments on time without ever forgetting anything is from point of my view an astounding achievement.
If I were to follow such a system I would be constantly racked with anxiety that I had promised someone I would do something and then forgotten about it, or needed to pay a bill, return a library book, eat some food before it went off, etc. etc. Perhaps I just have a terrible memory.
And more power to you for knowing what works for you and what doesn't. I found that to-do lists work for me, and I'm glad you know what works for you.
But it's important to ensure those lists are kept somewhere visible at the start of the day. Also constant updating, rewriting, and reprioritizing I find are key to their effectiveness.
In the past I tried more GTD focused apps with contexts, inboxes, start dates, due dates etc. but I’d spend more time tinkering with my todo’s than actually doing them.
Now I just dump something into the app with a due date of today. At the end of the day if I cannot do it, I move it to a sensible day I know I can do it, or if I still don’t know, tomorrow.
Also great for keeping track of repeating tasks like home maintenance.
They remind of the mind numbingly arrogant articles about UHNWI's that didn't have smartphones from a while back - well duh, they didn't because they had several servants that fixed their calendar, printed things, arranged meetings etc.
Same with the "no tech" Silicon Valley trend that's an incredible privilege not applicable to 99% of regular people.
You need a place to mentally park various things you need to do, ie. a todo list in todays complicated and advanced society - pay this bill, buy this thing, call this person etc.
Complexity falls with privilege.
You can't simply remember them unless living a very simple life. Maybe some very rich person can have a PA, live in the woods, or the hermit geniuses of 200 years ago worked very differently on paper and in notebooks, but today a simple todo list is absolutely needed unless living alone and with very, very few responsibilities.
I don't know anyone, like at all that doesn't have some kind of todo list, ranging from a simple unsorted list, to multiple lists to post it notes in your apartment.
i don't use a todo list. i either remember to do something or i don't. i have tried to use todo lists before but they have never worked. i just forget to check it, or i just don't end up doing the things written on it.
I mean i'm impressed if you can do everything stream-of-consciousness, but i also own both a company and have a family and could probably get away without lists when i was 22 without such distractions, but now i need to do at least 10+ things everyday, i can't remember all of that.
I would love to simplify my life but it doesn't seem feasible..
What is this, the '90s?
Yes, very much so. This is my first time writing for a large audience and I’m still learning how to balance the tone. My true views are at the bottom of the post and are aligned with yours.
You may want to read up on Poe's Law[0].
[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28010716
As usual, YMMV, but it’s certainly a prevalent enough phenomenon to indicate that todo lists aren’t enough for many people.
People just revert to a simple piece of paper, a txt file, as i did until i for some reason started using the Reminders app in osx/ios - the first actual app that i have used for more than a year. Stupidly simple and a part of the system already so makes sense.
For real life TODOs, I use a simple cli to keep them in a database that I share via Google Drive with my phone.
I tried that calendaring system a few times. It did not work for me. To-do lists are easy, comfortable, familiar. They may not work for millionaires. They work for me.
I’m really not sure on the distinction people are using between to-do lists and these other approaches - they all seem like to-do lists just formatted differently because people work differently.
I've tried Cal Newport's calendaring system as well, which is more or less a bullet journal + timeline and I thought it was somewhat helpful, but in the end it was too tedious.
The thing that doesn't work for me is that If I don't finish something within a timeframe, its not worth context switching. Other times it made no sense to take on a task at a specific time.
Sometimes its just better to have a simple list and wing the rest of it. Don't overcomplicate your life if you don't have to.
So while he does still use this system, it shows that the system breaks if your work doesn't fit being scheduled that way.
All in all, the take away really is that a lot of generic productivity advice, is bad if it gets really specific about the tool, because you have to find what works for you personally and for the type of work you have and i think sometimes even that is different tools at different times.
And what do you call that list you just wrote down, exactly?
Some reasons why can be found in Paul Grahams well-known essay „Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule“. Another one is getting the various random demands occurring in life out of the head so that it is free for difficult things that require full attention.
If you want to use calendars, the idea of the „unschedule“ from „The Now Habit“ might be more suitable for makers: Only put meetings, chores and actual freetime into your calendar so that it becomes obvious when there are blocks of time for focused work.
If I'm inspired I may have many more ideas than I have time to realistically implement. Putting them in a todo list helps me let go of them until I have the time to put them into action.
I also believe in separating thinking from doing, spending time away from my projects thinking seems to consistently produce solid new takes, but that is rarely the case if I'm actually at the keyboard working. I get too much tunnel vision and just spin my wheels.
This in part also to allow me to be a present in my relationships, to work at work. If I had to juggle all my ideas in my head, I'd be aloof and incommunicable most of the time.
Advice like that will always contradict itself since successful people are not all the same.
Key is make it more of a win than lose. Thus I bias to plain text. Either in a notepad type app on mobile, or in vim on Mac or Linux. Sometimes in a plain paper notebook with a ballpoint ink pen -- helpful if I want to sketch out some UI mockup, or, a rough 1st stab at a diagram-amenable concept, like software architecture.
I feel the problem space has been fairly solved for decades if not centuries. But use what works best for you.
The one recurring alternative presented to to-dos seems to be scheduling (ironic given that a counter argument of to-do lists is that its hard to estimate time). Schedule rather than to-do seems applicable to such a narrow band of people whose life is deterministic. The overhead of rescheduling everything that I can't do when the alert pops would be ridiculous.
I understand that they might not work for some, they do just fine for me.
A major cost for long lists (which is most honest todo lists) is reviewing the items to see what needs doing and reprioritizing today. It's highly distracting (thinking about lots of things you aren't going to address today), draining, and highly inefficient (again, you spend time and energy for nothing - you aren't going to act on most items).
1. Use a hierarchical todo list, an outline, essentially. Then you can skip entire sections ('paint garage' - not this week!).
2. For each entry, add a 'review-by' date. It means that you can forget about the entry until that date. Set the dates realistically - you have only so much time and energy, so don't bother dating the tasks before you realistially might have time for them (e.g., after the big project). To review your list, just sort by the review-by date and read the items dated today. If you do it realistically, that shouldn't be much more than what's possible today, and you can safely and comfortably forget the rest, knowing they won't slip through the cracks.
[1] https://easyorgmode.com
The method I try to use, is am feeling a weekly review where I review everything and check in with myself to see how I am feeling, what i got done and if i am on track, from there I can choose the things that are relevant to this week and ignore all the other tasks.
So when it comes to managing things on a day to day basis, my brain only has to deal with stuff coming up this week, safe in the knowledge that I have taken the time to think through everything else.
I use org mode; skip and/or fold/unfold entire sections/subsections at a time. Very useful for having an outline, hit 'TAB' on an item to expand, hit 'TAB' twice to expand all subsections, hit 'TAB' three times to fold everything again.
Use 'ALT' and up-arrow/down-arrow to move items up down the hierarchy. Very simple to use and remember.
Has worked really well getting things done and disconnecting from work.
For example, in my day job at a big tech company, I am often blocked from doing some TODO item because I'm waiting for someone else to do something (code review, ACL approval, respond to support ticket, etc). So I don't want my TODO app to show me items that are currently blocked. This constraint in my workflow is mostly just an artifact of the way big tech companies operate, not a universal feature of work. Other professionals doubtless face other constraints.
I have a theory that the solution to this problem is for professionals (not just software engineers!) to write their own productivity apps. With a good framework, it is easy to write quite useful mini-apps that reflect your specific needs - think a spreadsheet, but with much nicer, custom user interface. I built such a framework for my own needs, and I am slowly rolling it out to the world, check it out if you're interested: https://webwidgets.io/
> I have a theory that the solution to this problem is for professionals (not just software engineers!) to write their own productivity apps
I agree with this in theory -- I love tools, tooling, and composition-based frameworks to roll your own tools. And I enjoy what you've done so far, especially the spaced repetition character system, which reminds me of my days learning kanji.
For me, at least, the risks I foresee are (1) I would be on the hook for maintaining the app if something goes wrong, (2) I would have to spend a lot of work making it look nice enough that it wouldn't bug me, and (3) I don't know if it would be flexible enough to accommodate changes in my workflow in the future.
I would love to see, for example, a tutorial on how to roll you own to-do app in 10 minutes and deploy it.
I am most productive when I start the day looking at yesterday's list and re-organizing it. By the end if I don't get too distracted I end up being more productive...
In my experience, todo lists are suitable for keeping you focused on a set of tasks. However, they seem not so good are being a complete system of task scheduling. Over time they often fill up and have no clearly defined mechanism of clearing not-so-relevant-anymore tasks.
Therefore, I create a new todo list every day. First, I write down what I think, that I will get done today. Second I take a look at yesterdays list and decide for every open task if I will get it done today or if it should go to the backlog or graveyard. As the final step I look at the backlog, but mostly decide to just go with the list I already have.
This procedure helps me to focus and get daily tasks done. What it doesn't support is prioritization. To accomplish that I tend to reflect every few weeks on what I should be doing more and what I should be doing less and changing my calendar accordingly.
So I use todo lists primarily for daily focus, instead of expecting them to solve hard priority issues.
It felt like a natural next step after using emails as a Todo list as the post mentions.
For me, nearly all my new tasks come in via email and if I pass them on for someone else to resolve I will usually hear back via email too, so it makes 100% sense to have my todo list sitting next to my inbox. Drag and drop reordering, easy checkoff with saved history of completed tasks and near-seamless calendar integration make all this a no-brainer for me. I don't generally like MS products, but they got it right on this one.