Comment by dackle
2 days ago
This reminds me somewhat of a system by David MacIver: https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/using-a-list-to-manage-exec...
He builds his list from scratch every morning. The list is flat, so as you go about your day and subtasks occur to you, they are added to the list without explicit links to the main task.
I thought it might be risky to start with a blank list, because something important might be forgotten. But it turns out that a blank list is a great filter for what is truly important and motivating. If it is important, you will remember it at some point during the day.
This system is also excellent for shorter periods of time. If I come home and want to get started on dinner, want to tidy up a bit and have a few other demands on my attention, I put my laptop in a central location, open up Notepad, and just start typing in everything I see around me that I need to do. Usually I start with maybe 5 items, but as I start doing things I quickly add tasks to the list, and it might grow to 15 or 20 items. But then at some point the list starts to shrink again as these small, granular tasks are completed. It is strangely satisfying to see the list initially grow and then shrink to nothing. It also leaves me with a feeling of having thoroughly attended to everything that was bothering me when I first walked in the door.
> If it is important, you will remember it at some point during the day.
As someone with ADHD I’ve never found this to be true. I often forget to eat. I’d forget to file my taxes without reminders.
We're on the same brainwave. Literally thought to myself, "but I forget to eat all the time" and scrolled down to see this.
ADHD obviously can make stuff like this hard, and most neurotypical people seem to operate on a "if it's important I'll remember it" mentality, which I'm incredibly jealous of. I still haven't found a good system for tracking important tasks without getting "overloaded" with too many tasks and/or subtasks.
Serious question: in those scenarios, do you never have awareness about your need to eat? Or does it occur at some point, but then you decide not to eat at the moment, and after making that decision then you never revisit it?
I ask because I often realize I'm hungry or it's time to eat, but I'm too engaged in the task I'm doing and I think "I'll eat a bit later" and then once I've done that the first time I often never consider again, at least until the next meal time. I wonder if that's what people mean when they say it, or if the idea of stopping for a meal simply didn't even occur to them?
I don't usually forget to eat, but this happens to me all the time for tasks that don't have a physical feedback mechanism.
I missed a doctor's appointment today because I didn't remember to schedule a corresponding "you need to leave the house _now_" alarm to go with the calendar event, which I forgot about because I looked at my calendar once in the morning and the appointment was in the afternoon.
I will remember _some_ tasks if they "are important", but those are typically things that cause me enough anxiety that I just don't ever actually stop thinking about them until they are done. I can't really do reliable just in time recall of tasks unless it is for something I have deeply internalized into a habit.
Not the person you asked, but in my experience one or multiple of the following happen:
- I just don't notice I'm hungry (this one happens most to me)
- I notice I'm hungry but get distracted and forget
- I notice I'm hungry but I don't have the energy to devote to making/finding food
- I notice I'm hungry and I straight up don't care even though I'm aware I should
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How do you get so engage in the tasks you are doing so you forget to eat? I suppose most people here have the opposite issue, we do not engage in the task at all and once we start, we stop doing it after a short while because we find a more interesting things to do such as eating, grab a coffee or reading HN, news etc. We would love to be able to stay on the task and not go and eat.
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Quite literally, my awareness vanishes into the task or nothing at all. The conscious experience of it is basically blinking at 2pm and discovering it's actually 7pm and I'm dizzy for some reason.
Heck I forget things between remembering I need to do it and adding it to the list, in the time it takes to get my phone out and open the todo app.
I have reminders and still forget to pay my property taxes sometimes.
Oh shit, this just reminded me that I have a tax deadline this week. I ignored the reminder from a few days ago.
> It’s been my experience that any TODO list system I use will acquire an ugh field around it that gradually turns it into a thing I’m guiltily avoiding.
Considering that all of my tasks come from my to-do list and there's no way at all I could remember the dozens of tasks on my to-do list (I'm a manager, maybe that makes it worse), it's actually just impossible for me to avoid my list. Guiltily or otherwise.
The list doesn't make me anxious, having all of these tasks undone makes me anxious. Forgetting them makes me anxious. Having everything written down then doing everything and being on top of everything keeps me calm and sane.
> If it is important, you will remember it at some point during the day.
Varies person by person. My memory is nowhere near good enough for this to be true.
The type of job can definitely vary a lot in terms of the number of tasks and their complexity.
It would do people a whole lot of good, if they start looking at a great day as executing well tested 'checklist' rather than a 'todo list' built from scratch every day.
No wonder some of the most productive people like Knuth, or people like presidents many times have fixed schedules, clothes they wear, food they eat etc etc.
If something is working, do it more often, you want to do more of what works, at some point things that don't work wont be on your check list.
You can't generalize. Everyone has things that work for them.
Taking a few minutes to recreate that todo list for the day from a blank slate helps my brain get ready for the day and makes me more productive. (akin to stretching before exercise). I don't need a checklist for eating, cleaning, etc, but maybe some do.
I'm going to try that too. An ongoing todo list just starts to slip from my mind. I have a whiteboard in my kitchen, where I figured I'd write tasks I needed to do and erase them off when I finished them, so it'd be a continuous todo list. But after a while, it'd slip my mind and I'd go weeks without even seeing the whiteboard in my awareness, and then when I did remember it was there, it'd be half outdated and I'd have to start all over.
Getting into the daily habit of using any tool/method in the first place is the hard part for me, so making it as tangible as possible and not-too-convenient might help.
A recipe has a great chance of success, there are few such recipes.
If you think you will try out a new recipe from scratch everyday it shouldn't be surprising if most of your days don't add up to much, or even add up to a negative.
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I did not know about this article, thank you! It definitely goes deep into task breakdown, just like what I am proposing. But I have a hard time starting from an empty list in the morning, because I can totally forget that I need to work if I do not jump straight into my tasks (ADHD brain).
>it turns out that a blank list is a great filter for what is truly important and motivating. If it is important, you will remember it at some point during the day.
I started using GTD, but due to sprawling list overwhelm, evolved it into nanoGTD, where I start each day with a blank page and recreate my projects and next actions from memory/imagination.
This works best on paper. To make sure nothing fell through the cracks, I just turn to the previous page.
The real value of paper year planner books is your todo list can't grow to infinate length - if you don't do something today you have to decide at the end of the day will you forget about it or manually copy it to tommorow.
it is easy to make todo items. The hard part is realzing you can't do everything and you must not do something