← Back to context

Comment by GZGavinZhao

6 hours ago

Surely I'm not the only person who first used Linear [0] at work and then loved it so much that I started using it for personal task management...?

Sure it's not open-source, but none of the open-source tools are as polished as that.

[0]: https://linear.app

5 comments

GZGavinZhao

Reply
sidv22  6 hours ago

can you share how you're using it to track personal work?

  • GZGavinZhao  5 hours ago

    I often suffer from having too many things I want to work on, plus impulsive tasks (e.g. I saw an issue on GH that I happen to know how to solve) that I go on and spend 3 hours to do right away, causing delay in everything else more important. I force myself to only spend time on tasks on the "Active" view (minus a very small set of exceptions). All other impulsive thoughts go into "Backlog" status. Every night I review the "Backlog" view and move issues that I actually decide to do in the "Active" view. Also obviously you have to periodically clean up "Backlog".

    That is the most important value Linear brings to me. There are other tools that can achieve similar effects, but I learned how to do it with Linear at work so I stuck with that. On top of this, Linear has priorities, deadlines, task blocking relations, etc., that naturally reflect how I prioritize issues in life. This is the same as how I prioritize tasks to do at work. Once again there are tools to do this outside of Linear, but none of them are as polished to use and just work.

    • tra3  5 hours ago

      I really applaud your discipline. It took me a long time to realize that the todo system you use is almost meaningless if you don't execute on the items that you prioritized.

      1 reply →