So I decided the list should be done before lunch, which meant I could pick anything on the list, but it had to be something on the list. And after lunch, I have a list of three big-picture projects I can work on. I can choose any one of them, but it has to be one of them. Their next steps are reasonably well laid out, because I don't think I do generally have executive dysfunction issues, so I get to pick one of three projects and work on it until dinner.

This has saved my sanity. I don't waste very much time at all now. I don't do well with strict routines, but these buckets take so much of the guess work out. In the morning, 15 options. In the afternoon, only 3. It's so much more manageable.

If there are random phone calls and stuff to make, they usually and up right before lunch if I finish the checklist early, or right after otherwise.

Most expenses are hackable. I bought the most reliable car with the most ubiquitous used part availability. It's 17 years old and has 235k miles on it. I pay $180 per year for my phone plan (unlimited talk/text and 5GB data on a Verizon MVNO). I've cut my own hair for years using a goofy tool called a Robocut. It's 4 inches long all over (I'm female). People tell me they love the layers. If you can pull enough of a cash cushion out before the beginning of the year so you can spend out of your savings, if you make or realize capital gains on $21,800 of income, you can get health insurance for <$50 with a $0 deductible and <$2k OOP max. Life doesn't actually have to be expensive.

I like working in startups, so it's normal for me to be out of work for ~1 year out of every 4 or 5.

--

P.S. On that "missing from our education" bit. My kids are in school now and I can make my adult conclusions. To be just, the school emphasizes and teaches autonomy, self-organization, etc. It does that, however, for the school's own needs and prepares the kids for one very specific way of working, which just cannot be applied in every situation.

Also, this todo system is basically what I apply on chaos-days, but with the addition that I preferably start next days list at end of day, as to remind me of momentum and focus.

By this, I assume you are referring to “System 1 and System 2” thinking. My problem with “Thinking Fast and Slow” is that it seems as though almost all of the research has been caught up in the “replication crisis”, and I can no longer trust any of the content.

You mean current apparent difficulties in replicating the results of many published studies; I assume ...

At the start of every day I create a new GitHub issue for that day, in a private repository. I throw one or two priority tasks for the day in there as GitHub TODO items (- [ ] description here)

As the day continues I add random notes and links and screenshots as comments on that issue. I edit that first issue description with new tasks, and check of tasks I've done.

A lot of these tasks are "- [ ] URL-to-issue-in-another-repo" - GitHub automatically marks those tasks as done when I close that issue, no matter what repo it's in.

I often add an "## Unplanned" heading to my issue description and list things under there that weren't in the plan but that I did anyway.

The next day I start a new issue. I sometimes revisit issues from previous days, just to remind myself what I did, but I don't try to close everything and I don't transfer items across unless they are REALLY important.

I automated the creation of the daily issues using the trick I describe here: https://til.simonwillison.net/github-actions/daily-planner

Also helpful is to have a list of no more than 3 weekly priorities. When I don't know what to focus on, I often look at those. They are most effective when I'm actually doing my weekly review. Also a practice that's so helpful and freeing.

Perhaps pedantic, but is defining an acronym before using it no longer in vogue?

This process works very well for me. I learned it while working as a stock broker, where every day I needed to check specific economic indicators that would be published or company disclosures, call client X, Y or Z, and in days where options, swaps or forwards would expire I needed to check a few things. So I kind of got that behaviour ingrained in me, and it has helped me immensely I think.

This does 4 good things and one bad one. Good: 1. It fills up my calendar, which gives me a better chance of getting time to do things. 2. It teaches me to say No to something when the calendar is full, or at least acknowledge the trade-off from saying Yes. 3. It helps me negotiate with people who I am willing to show my crazy to. "Ok which stuff on my calendar is your ask more important than?" 4. My phone reminds me to do all this stuff.

And the bad: 1. Every single night I have to rearrange items that I inevitably miss.

Rearranging is self-punishment, but it has a value. I rarely drop a commitment, and I am better at managing what commitments I make.

At peak executive function load I try to do 2 45m blocks per day.

This is for browsing HN, staring into space, etc.

Sometimes you work right through it because you’re in flow, other times it’s a godsend rest.

It’s nice to leave yourself little presents like that!

I don't think these techniques ever generalise that well, everyone needs to find something slightly different that works best for them. For example, I do accumulate stuff in a todo app and an aura of dread with it, but I can't imagine starting a new list every day, that's even worse to me. I do sometimes find it useful to add stuff I'm going to do anyway, as described, though - gets the endorphins going I suppose, gets me into the swing of ticking some things off before tackling something bigger that's been sitting there a while.

That works just with tasks/chores in general too, even if not listed. Last weekend I decided I needed to thoroughly wipe down the kitchen counter, which necessitated washing up first, and then before I knew it I was cleaning the oven. Hadn't intended to do that at all, it did need it though. (Of course, almost as soon as I had a nice clean door again, the bulb blew... Maybe I'll get around to that today.)

I think it can be negatively affected by mental health issues and can take time to recover and get back to parity.

I’ve found that voice-memos are particularly effective in assisting me. I’ll talk through a problem and usually find solutions quickly, eg debugging.

Am currently working on a (transcribed) voice-interface to improve in this area, right now.

I might try out his formula tomorrow, possibly in voice.

It's great to hear you've found methods that work for you. Voice-memos must feel lower friction than writing things out.

  \\ [date]
  need
  - things that absolutely have to be done today
  really should do
  - things that I really should do today
  should do
  - other things I should do to get ahead / stay on top of
  want to do
  - what I actually want to do today if possible
  concerns
  - things that I'm currently concerned about (to help me resolve them without losing focus)
  one thing
  - I'm going to do this one thing for 3-4 hours straight today

I was used to apps like Asana that would just let things sit there and accumulate and fester. It made me hate how much I wasn't getting done every day. One or two tasks a day piling up over the course of many days just grows into a mountain of shame, and as the author says, it builds this "UGH field" around it that makes me not want to look at it at all, much less try to wade through it. The system was hurting more than helping, really.

I started using To-Do because we recently switched to Microsoft at work, and I'm trying to embrace the ecosystem or whatever. And what was an annoying deficiency (why can't this crappy MS app do what I want) has become a huge relief.

Automatically having my day reset every day has helped me feel more like I can actually get through most of what I realistically intend to do in a day. I take a minute in the morning to throw stuff on the list, MS does helpfully suggest some things (presumably using something they now call "AI"), and then I start working down it. At the end of the day, anything I didn't get to -- honestly, anything that wasn't as important as I thought it would be that day -- is gone. The next day, I start fresh. Re-focus, re-prioritize, and start executing. Everything still gets done, but my focus is on the day ahead rather than days past. And no "ugh field."

I would note that my approach to projects with teams is different, of course. All of those tasks will eventually need to get done, so it's not helpful to let things disappear. But where this does apply is in how much a given contributor wants to bite off in a day. The backlog on a project is the backlog, no getting around it, but a tighter focus each day on whatever's realistic, 3-5 tasks probably, relieves a lot of tension that helps work be more effective, I find.

Last comment, I love that the author also puts things on the list just to scratch them off. I picked up this habit somewhere long ago. It seems silly to do something, then put it on the list, then just scratch it right off, but it has the real effect of notching another task done. Helps limit the days where you feel like you didn't actually do anything, those yak-shaving days. You can look at the "completed" tab and see that no, you did actually do stuff. Another source of shame neutralized.

To-do is surprisingly great. It's my GTD tool of choice at the moment.

They change things, though, and you can't switch a setting. For some time they stopped adding tasks with due date on the current day to the "My day" smart list.

It makes sense if you think about it in terms of what they wanted "My day" to be. Adding things to "My day" should be a conscious choice.

But it was a change, and it's very nice to have due tasks automatically added. They changed it back after a few weeks, thankfully.

As it stands, this really stops me from using separate lists for timebound tasks. I only use them for long-term planning/blue sky stuff.

One thing I'd add is a daily paper journal, where at the end I note down a few big projects works well. It helps with continuity and really improved time estimation. By doing this I've come to realize I under-estimate time to completion of my 'that will take a week' projects by 4x - 8x.

Recently I've incorporated a Maslow's heirarchy of needs approach to task prioritization. Hours of sleep, quality and consistency of diet, meditation, months of saved income, and family and community connection are the base. (I'm still working on these but it feels right.) It's somewhat automated but that's a different topic.

If anybody had ideas about the later idea I'd love to hear your thoughts.

    write things down

    cross things off

A fully achieved list! Success!!

Truthfully, I've been doing forms of this more recently, writing things down that I know I can accomplish, and checking them off. It gives me a good motivation boost. Especially very simple first steps for a project, it helps me get started and then once I get over that hump I can keep going without the list. Then it's very rewarding to come back and check all kinds of things off!

I also tend to put different kinds of tasks on different types of lists.

I make little pocket clipboards out of a piece of cedar shingle and a folded-in-half 4x6 brown index card, held together with a mini binder clip. This gives 4 different panels to write on. One of these clipboards is my primary grocery and hardware and other shopping list, which gets the occasional song/band name or funny idea written on it. Another of these lists is for my house and yard projects, using a somewhat bullet-journal like tracking system.

I have a 6x9 wirebound notebook at home that serves as my "daily plan" receptacle for work related tasks (I wfh 3 days a week). I take pictures of these pages if there are any tasks or info I need to refer to at the office. Then when at the office, I have piles of scrap paper that came from mistaken print jobs that I write meeting notes on. Also stickies inevitably get onto both of those. I also have a 4x6 wireboound notebook that fits well in a pocket that I bring when going to other people's work stations to write down the support items that didn't get into the ticket.

Anything that ends up as a project that I will put more time into will get notes written about it in Obsidian, and sometimes still OneNote, and also in the notes text file and comments in the source code of my development projects. I agree that the simple text file is the easiest way to record things on the computer.

As much as I've tried to consolidate these things into one system again and again, my current approach follows the ideas of TFA by just reducing the friction to get something written down somewhere, and if its important enough, in a number of places.

Writing on paper is faster than typing on a phone for me, but not as fast as typing on a PC. But getting to a pen and a blank part of a page is often faster than getting the right note-taking app in focus, so I still tend to mostly do that. Checking something off is also usually more rewarding on paper than on the PC.

And on my grocery lists, I check things off as I put them in the cart, AND cross everything off when done at the store, so that is a double-completion which is extra satisfying!

Even without an external todo system that reinforces remembering the task tomorrow, but the article acknowledges you can reconcile with an external system at the end of the day.

Would I stick with it? Dunno. But the general ideas are the same as extracting a Today list in GTD daily (given that the original system was designed around index cards and paper), or as the way BuJo doesn’t roll over unfinished tasks from the last rapid log automatically and makes you define them again each day. In the latter case, the repetition of recalling and recording the task every day is an explicit feature.

As for putting things on the list as you do them, I actually have an electronic version of that on my phone already as a shortcut called Give Me Credit.

If I ask Siri (on phone, HomePod, etc) to give me credit for a task it goes into Todoist as a Today task in my Credit project, prefixed with a cash icon ready for me to immediately check off. That way I don’t give myself the impression I never get anything done just because it’s not sufficiently planned first.

ADHD is an umbrella term and we’re all a little differently affected. I don’t think there is such a thing as “this organizational system isn’t for ADHD folks.” It’s just not for some folks, period.

For some people the energy required to do the simplest things, like taking out the pot from the coffee maker, is much greater than would reasonably be expected. As a result these tasks seem almost impossible to do, no matter how many times they write it down. Yet, all the advice out there after having written down the task seems to be 'just do it'.

Rather than start with the hardest tasks first, I'll start with the easiest.

If I'm struggling with the easiest one, then it means I need even easier ones on the list to ramp up.

If I'm REALLY stuck, I can often overcome that starting inertia by doing something physical IMMEDIATELY (pushups, body weight squats) and then trying to see how fast I can start the task I'm stuck on. Something about getting the body moving seems to help.

There is also the trick of doing some introspection about why I'm having trouble starting a task, because often my executive dysfunction is tied to some emotional valence (eg fear of messing up, fear of taking too long because I will get distracted) and addressing each one aloud ("It's okay if I mess it up, I'm going to try it anyway", etc).

  (priority) task text +project @context

  (A) Call Mom @Phone +Family
  (A) Schedule annual checkup +Health
  (B) Outline chapter 5 +Novel @Computer
  (C) Add cover sheets @Office +TPSReports
  x Download Todo.txt mobile app @Phone

> - [ ] Create a workflow document with URLs and Text Templates

> - [ ] Create a daily running document with my 3 questions and headings and indented markdown checkbox lists; possibly also with todotxt/todo.txt / TaskWarrior & BugWarrior -style lineitem markup.

3 questions: Since, Before, Obstacles: What have I done since the last time we met? What will I do before the next time we meet? What obstacles are blocking my progress?

  ## yyyy-mm-dd
  ### @teammembername
  #### Since
  #### Before
  #### Obstacles

  $ task help
  task; task list;       # 0 tasks.
  task add "Read the source due:today priority:H project:projectA"
  task add Read the docs later due:tomorrow priority:M project:projectA
  task add project:one task abc
  # "Created task 3."
  task add project:one task def +someday depends:3
  task

  task context define projectA "project:projectA or +urgent"
  task context projectA
  task add task ghi
  task add task jkl +someday depends:3
  task    # lists just tasks for the current context:"project:projectA"

  task next
  task 1 done

  task next
  task 2 start
  task 2 done

  task context none
  task delete

The TaskWarrior +WAITING virtual label is the new way instead of status:waiting according to the changelog.

Every once in awhile, I remember that I have a wiki/workflow document with a list of labels for systems like these: https://westurner.github.io/wiki/workflow#labels :

GTD says have labels like -next, -waiting, and -someday.

GTD also incorporates the 4 D's of Time Management; the Eisenhower Matrix Method.

4 D's of Time Management: Do, Defer/Schedule, Delegate, Delete

Time management > The Eisenhower Method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_management#The_Eisenhower...