I've been (semi-)intentionally unemployed for a little over a year now, and I reached a point a couple months ago where I just LOST IT at the prospect of having to continue to make decisions at every moment of every day about what to do next. I even have a daily checklist of about 15 things I need to do every day to keep making at least minimal progress toward my goals, but because none of them had assigned times, I was still having to choose every. damn. thing.
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.
How do you juggle errands and other ad-hoc responsibilities? I really like your approach and I’ve implemented something similar but I struggle with that 3rd bucket I’m trying to get at. I would really appreciate your input!
Errands usually get pinned on an appointment in the same general area. I try to stack those on one of two days a week so I'm not getting interrupted every day.
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.
This site is insane. I can't imagine being unemployed for over a year. If I were unemployed for a month I'd be fucked.
Your life sounds incredibly difficult, my heart goes out to you, I'm so glad you are coping with gliding through life.
Edit: After reconsidering, it's true. Given a year of reflection, we can all better ourselves. Let us all realize it's only a year of not working that can fix us.
Lol why are you surprised that a forum dedicated to professionals in a very high paying field with low barriers to entry has people with a ton of disposable income?
I highly recommend living well within your means, and having simple tastes. I've never made more than $80k in a year, but rarely have I spent more than half of it.
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.
This inspiring. Keep it up and good luck! I like working in startups too and live well below my means. Have had about the same cadence as you re: being out of work. I have a dependent so my calculus is a little different, but similar on par.
My non-startup friends do not understand. They're always this funny mix of confused, worried, and jealous when I take a break, but I've never had an interview for a startup job where anyone cared about any gaps in my resume.
Hey man. Consider that it's useful to get perspectives from people who are in situations different from your own. They're not telling you that you suck for not being in their position.
It is funny how these methods get rediscovered and reinvented over and over again. I believe that it is absolutely necessary for each to have their own "framework" for this kind of things, but it also falls into the category of things somewhat missing from our education. I wish someone had explained to me, earlier in my life, some basic psychological principles and some practices that are tried many times by different people in this domain. The works that filled it in for me were: The 7 Habits (I cringe at the writing style, but the ideas are real good), GTD (the concepts, not to the letter), Atomic Habits, and Thinking Fast and Slow (the core idea). I highly recommend these.
--
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.
I think German school system tried to teach me these systems, or at least offered optional courses to learn about them. As a pretentious 16 year old I couldn't have cared less. Maybe it's hard to educate people about it before they experienced the struggle themselves.
So true. A solution presented before the problem, IS the problem. Goes for kids and adults, and entire organizations! Quote mine.
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.
Totally agree. I see a similar thing in debates about technical stuff. A lot of times I realize that something I'm pretty sure is important is not going to be compelling to someone else unless or until they run into it personally.
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.
I've been doing a version of this for the past few months using GitHub Issues. It's been working really, really well for me.
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.
One reason this method seems good is that it requires you to write down a new list each day. For me at least, it's easier to write a fresh list and get started on that than to get motivated by a list I wrote before. Writing a new list makes me remember what I /want/ to get done, and why.
This reminds me of some good practices I've learned from implementing GTD principals. Even with my massive GTD-style lists, which I love, having a small paper list for that day, even if it repeats what's on the massive digital list, is a very nice focus function.
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.
The funny thing is I did finish reading it. But I wanted to go back and reference something and that's when I couldn't find it. Thus proving I had learnt nothing.
It is one of those books that are really good, and really a product of its time. Most of what you get out of it you can read online and its methods need more than a little tweak today, because our digital systems are so much more powerful than the folder based one he suggests (example, GTD is heavily against adding things to your calendar, because it confuses between things that you intend to do at a certain time and things that must be done at that time. With digital calendars, you can color code the difference).
Since switching to GTD, I've removed most of my pre-planned blockers and it's working well. How is color coding helping with the fact that according to GTD, only actual appointments should be put into the calendar?
I have gotten good results from calendar blocking, so obviously I disagree with Davids rule about only putting things in the calendar that has to be done then. I can see his point for a physical calendar, but on a digital calendar you can have a (say) red calendar that your "must be done at this time or not at all" appointments can be added. That way when you see a red calendar entry you known what it means.
This may not be optimal but it works for me: everything that I promise to do, even to myself, goes on the calendar. If I am really going to do something, I should have a plan of _when_, and that plan is in the form of a calendar invite to myself.
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.
Funny, I’ve been doing a TODO list almost exactly like this daily plan every business day since 2009. An important thing for me is to consider it s list of things that may eventually be accomplished so that I don’t feel guilty when I don’t tick all of them. One difference for me is that in calmer days and on Mondays I also check my financial status and my own personal KPIs. (Another is that I don’t throw away, I generally keep them because I use notebooks.)
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.
Simple hack that has helped me is changing “todo” to “maybedo”. It reminds me that at some point I thought whatever task was worth doing but gives me the freedom to do something else as needed. Most weeks, I make a “maybedo” list at the beginning of the work week on my whiteboard and erase items as they get completed. Erasing is just as satisfying as crossing off and keeps me out of the hyper-evaluative state of comparing how many things I’ve done vs where I started.
When I've been in low periods in terms of anxiety or mood, externalizing seems to be a salve. When I look back at how I've externalized in those periods, it seems excessive. It's like my executive functioning is no where in sight, and I can see that in how much I had to externalize to get a handle on things. But those periods of parity do return.
It's great to hear you've found methods that work for you. Voice-memos must feel lower friction than writing things out.
I find this is the same for me with writing in a journal. It is almost like an analogy with inertia. It takes a lot of effort to get started and then momentum kicks in.
The best thing here imo is the 'x-step coffee day' (how complicated/burdensome does it feel to make coffee today), that's brilliant.
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.)
Well, now that I wrote things down, I can cross that off. And now that I crossed something off, I can cross that one off too.
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've experimented with a bunch of different ways to keep track of my to-do lists, everything from phone apps and Notion to jotting down notes and recording voice memos. I even got a whiteboard for my home office, thinking that having my tasks always in sight would keep me on track. But after all that, what really works best for me is just a simple text file on my computer. I start a new file every week, list out everything I need to do (whether it’s for work or personal stuff), and check things off as I go. Sometimes, the simplest solutions really are the most effective.
I've come to the point of accepting that I will always take notes in multiple formats. Syncing is "achieved" by writing things down in different places enough times that I just eventually remember what I want to do.
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!
Every day I make a list in a long running text file. I typically copy the previous day and modify it.
\\ [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
One of my early frustrations with Microsoft's "To-do" app was that it discarded my "today" tasks every day. But now I love that it does this, for the reasons the author describes.
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.
> One of my early frustrations with Microsoft's "To-do" app was that it discarded my "today" tasks every day. But now I love that it does this, for the reasons the author describes.
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.
I really like "To-do" and am so glad it's integrated into Outlook's Mac client now. I wish there was a way to show all tasks, regardless of their list/categorization.
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.
To any and all people with ADHD reading this and the comments (like myself): this article is not for you and it’s ok that you can’t do this. Your brain doesn’t work this way and it’s ok and you’re not bad.
I am ADHD and this article resonated with me. Stuff I need to do sporadically floats in and back out of my head, and it’s rare that I’ll bring myself to act on them immediately. The technique is simply to have a pad on me and write a task down if it floats in.
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.
I don't know what everyone else does but I have to write everything down, similar to this article, and the free-flow way of doing things seems to mirror what works for me.
As an ADHD person, I absolutely love the metaphor of the day having too many steps. I’ve never thought about it that way, and I suspect there’s truth in it to explore.
I've appreciated reading other's take on this process. It's a very personal thing and finding what works for one's self takes time and is never really finished.
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.
Making detailed lists is helpful to remember what you have to do and prioritize it, but is only one part (planning) of executive function. The other part, actually executing, is arguably harder since it requires more input energy than just writing something on a piece of paper.
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'.
One strategy that sometimes works for me (ADHD) is the "momentum building" approach.
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).
> - [ ] 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
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.