I love reading Evan Travers' blog. He always puts a lot of thought into things that I also want to improve at. I know that a lot of people on Hacker News are very much against productivity hacking, but I none the less want to find ones that work and help making navigating life a little easier for me. I especially like the stuff he's done with Hammerspoon [1] and always look out for the things that can make using a Mac easier or at least less frustrating in some cases.
Unsurprisingly he's also given a lot of thought about task management. It's something that I've never had lasting success with but from each failure I learn a little bit or benefit a little bit, so I keep on trying. At the very least, it's nice to read up on the development of various applications and if they stand out to someone whose opinion I value a lot in this space.
I use Things like he does, but I've never been able to stick to a routine with a set of daily tasks in the same way he apparently has. I often forget that it exists, even though it's one of the four primary apps on my iPhone. A lot of tasks input into are years old at this point. I'm not sure that switching task managers would actually do much anything to help improve my workflow, but I would be curious if anyone else on HN has any tips to making them more useful beyond writing down groceries.
> I've never been able to stick to a routine with a set of daily tasks in the same way he apparently has
Productivity nerd here, so I’m not criticising anyone. But…
Could this be because you simply don’t want to? My feeling is that we’re told that to be Good Productivity Nerds there are these things we have to do. Daily rituals, journaling, reviews … honestly, reading Evan’s post made me feel nervous. Like, when does the guy have time to relax? It’s all checklists and routines. Good god.
I get it, whatever works for you. It sounds like it works for him. But that doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. Perhaps if you haven’t been able to keep the routine it’s because you don’t actually like the routine?
I do think it's possible that it's simply a matter of not enjoying it, but I also struggle with keeping up positive habits that I do enjoy as well. Figuring out how to get started and keep starting on daily habits is probably the hardest part of it more than the actual doing of it.
I don't really aspire to do everything that Evan or other GTD enthusiasts do, just small parts of it. Breaking down tasks especially and having a list as a source of truth would be really helpful, but I haven't yet figured out a good way of doing that.
Unsurprisingly he's also given a lot of thought about task management. It's something that I've never had lasting success with but from each failure I learn a little bit or benefit a little bit, so I keep on trying. At the very least, it's nice to read up on the development of various applications and if they stand out to someone whose opinion I value a lot in this space.
I use Things like he does, but I've never been able to stick to a routine with a set of daily tasks in the same way he apparently has. I often forget that it exists, even though it's one of the four primary apps on my iPhone. A lot of tasks input into are years old at this point. I'm not sure that switching task managers would actually do much anything to help improve my workflow, but I would be curious if anyone else on HN has any tips to making them more useful beyond writing down groceries.
[1] https://evantravers.com/articles/tags/hammerspoon/