[HN Gopher] We Still Don't Get Things Done
___________________________________________________________________
We Still Don't Get Things Done
Author : gk1
Score : 241 points
Date : 2021-07-30 18:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| [deleted]
| gexla wrote:
| My app for a summary of things I have done is my time tracker.
|
| The time horizon for my to-do list is a week. Further out than a
| week is probably a scheduled item which is a different thing than
| a to-do.
|
| Everything else is an idea among my notes. My backlog is my
| notes. It's the place where I go to jot something down and then
| forget about it until something happens to surface that item
| again. If that happens, then maybe I'll act on it. Maybe I'll
| just add to the note and forget about it again.
|
| Anything on my to-do list which isn't done a week from being
| added gets turned into a note, to be forgotten about.
|
| Information dense project task flows aren't to-do items and I
| manage them in a proper PM app rather than a to-do app.
|
| I think it's important to be constrained with how you use todos.
| My list is short and easy to manage. Even being memory and
| attention challenged, it's easy to get a quick grasp on
| everything I need to do for the next few days.
| 4e530344963049 wrote:
| https://trimread.org/articles/45
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I'm always curious how others "work." I use the Pomodoro
| technique myself, where I do a minimum of 8 sessions per workday.
| I try to do 10, but usually, I'm somewhere in between. I do not
| count meetings.
|
| Every day at work, I show up and do a minimum of 4 straight hours
| of concentrated and focused work.
|
| I often get told things like: "I'm killing it", "I'm a high
| producer", etc.
|
| To me, I feel like I'm cheating the system, and I work too
| little.
|
| What do other people do?
| sbaildon wrote:
| Anecdotally from myself, colleagues, friends, blogs, and random
| forum posters, 4 solid hours of knowledge work is right on the
| nose.
|
| I work on my own time, starting almost immediately after waking
| up with the sunrise. I get in 3-4 hours while the world is
| quiet leading up to lunch time; then I'll cook some lunch and
| go training. Post-lunch work is autopilot admin or operation
| tasks. There are days where focus is amped up to 11 and the
| brain fog doesn't set in--but those days are rare.
|
| I'd say that your feelings of "cheating the system" are
| ingrained by a culture that doesn't apply to your profession.
| bmallerd wrote:
| I tracked my productivity pretty rigorously in college for
| about a year. My maximum sustainable productivity was somewhere
| between 6 and 8 pomodoros a day. If a deadline was imminent, I
| could "crunch" and put in something like 12 a day for a week.
| Interestingly, I would crash afterwards and can only do about 3
| pomodoros-per-day until my brain recovers. The average
| productivity in the crash + recovery cycle was also 6! So I was
| just borrowing from future productivity.
| a9h74j wrote:
| You should blog aoout "Pomodoro debt"
| akcreek wrote:
| In case it is helpful to anyone, we've recently started a post
| series in the HourStack blog about this topic. A lot of focus
| goes into time management strategies, but often prioritization
| is ignored. It's quite powerful if you can put the two together
| in a way that works for you as doing the right work is
| preferable to just doing work.
|
| There are many prioritization and time management strategies
| out there, but we intro some of the popular ones [0] and we'll
| be expanding each of those into detailed posts over the coming
| weeks. The first one about using the Ivy Lee method to
| prioritize tasks [1].
|
| [0] https://hourstack.com/blog/16-effective-prioritization-
| and-t...
|
| [1] https://hourstack.com/blog/how-to-use-the-ivy-lee-method-
| to-...
| adevx wrote:
| I have no system. I boot up my laptop in the morning, have a
| coffee and answer all support emails. After finishing my emails
| I feel like I've done a lot and start looking at my fun
| projects (trading bot, IoT projects) Then a server error pops
| up on Telegram and I realize I was supposed to rewrite the
| image processing routine. Back to work, and up until late at
| night before finally finishing this task. In short, event
| driven task management.
| megameter wrote:
| Increasingly I have absorbed "work" into a three step feedback
| cycle - something comparable to OODA but with a more
| contemplative purpose. It's really intended for creative
| projects but it scales and generalizes nicely to many life
| things:
|
| 1. Principles - why you do a thing
|
| 2. Benchmarks - what defines success and failure at making the
| thing
|
| 3. Mediums - how thing is made
|
| The starting point - the review - is often to-do list like. The
| to-do list's function is mostly taken care of within five
| minutes of heading out the door for a walk with out-loud self-
| talking: "So, yesterday this happened. And I want to do this
| today." Verbalizing it(while a bit surprising to passerby)
| makes a huge difference because it does the "getting it out of
| me" function that all these apps do, and then lets the thought
| disappear into conversation without a List of Shame forming.
|
| But the thing I say I want to do is usually defined in terms of
| medium(the specific actions I take or techniques I will be
| using). If I agree I can drill down to specifics until I've
| designed an exact step-by-step process. If I _disagree_ with
| that it 's going to happen that I loop around to either the
| principle(is there a good reason?) or the benchmark(am I
| measuring the goal correctly?).
|
| Blockage can usually be identified by pointing to one part of
| the cycle that doesn't work. I have to get all three parts to
| cohere for an action to matter. So I will have days where I act
| and then learn that the benchmark is wrong, thus needing to
| throw away the result but getting a little bit closer to
| coherent design.
|
| All of this happens outside the formal workplace, mind. The
| principles and benchmarks of the business, after all, are
| independent of my own. But it pushes me to find useful
| perspectives and get away from hours-on-clock production, which
| I needed to do when I started working for myself. I've ended up
| with all my income deriving from investment, which could also
| be seen as "cheating the system". I actually worked backwards
| from the outcome(hmm, somehow that happened) to what made it
| happen(identifying and refining how I operate). When I do the
| analysis it's really clear that the times of my life that were
| most stressed were the ones where obligations made me act, act,
| act without being able to go through the loop, so now I'm
| trying to apply it more consciously.
| praptak wrote:
| I am a huge procrastinator. After a long time of trying various
| things I found out that getting shit done is a constant battle
| that starts very deep inside the mind. I'm talking about the
| stuff you talk with your therapist and probably not on the
| first session too.
|
| I get stuff done only as long as I'm keeping the chain of
| motivation from the inside the mind to the thing I'm doing. If
| I start thinking that I "have" to do something, the chain is
| broken, as it means that I don't really _want_ to do it.
|
| When my mind is in the "I chose to do it" mode instead, I don't
| even need Pomodoro - I can consistently do stuff even if there
| is some aversion.
|
| The most coherent writing about this I know is the
| Procrastination Monkey series from Waitbutwhy.
| TheFreim wrote:
| During school I'd immedietly do all of my assignments. Id spend
| anywhere from 2 to 6 straight hours getting the entire week of
| assignments done. By the time I got tired I was done with most
| of it and had time to do what I wanted. Worked wonders, while
| everyone else was struggling I was able to get straight A's and
| work on side projects/video games.
|
| Is the "real" world supposed to be different than this
| experience?
| jointpdf wrote:
| I don't know what the real world is, but my experience as a
| chronic procrastinator with ADD was the polar opposite of
| this. I did assignments on the bus, wrote speeches during the
| period before I'd have to give them, etc. I'm mildly messed
| up from these habits now, but I did (mostly, with some
| spectacular failures) get away with it at the time.
|
| If something captured my imagination, like certain writing
| assignments or my programming classes, then I could
| hyperfocus.
| superice wrote:
| I use a similar technique, combined with meticulous time
| tracking of every and any minute I spend professionally. As
| somebody who is self-employed, I quickly realized that working
| 8+ hours per day is an absolute myth. I count any day where I
| spent more than 4 hours in a state of focused work as a great
| day, and weeks where I spend more than 20 hours a week are
| rare. My personal goal has shifted from trying to work as many
| hours as possible to compressing these 4 productive hours into
| the smallest time window possible. Arriving at 10am at work,
| and leaving at 5pm is close to the optimum in my experience,
| due to coffee breaks, lunch, and the occasional goofing off on
| HN.
|
| So no, you're not cheating the system, you are probably running
| at optimum efficiency. The efficiency of the average employee
| in terms of productive hours per day spent in chair is
| ridiculously low.
|
| As a side note: I'm very much wondering whether I should insist
| on 40 hour work weeks when I get to the point of hiring people.
| I know there is a movement going for the 4-day workweek, but I
| personally see more in a 6 hour work day.
| Lightbody wrote:
| Related:
| https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1210242188870930433?s=21
| milesvp wrote:
| I have found similar results in my time tracking.
|
| At best 2 flow hours before lunch. 2 flow hours after lunch.
| Sometimes bonus 1.5 flow hours after 'tea time' (not
| sustainable). Sometimes bonus 1 flow hour after dinner
| (completely unsustainable). Basically 4hrs is sutainable. 5.5
| is pushing it.
|
| Also I've found if you don't take at least a whole day off
| (hobbies that look like work don't quite count as time off)
| then daily concentration with quickly deteriorates as well.
|
| edit: I should note that these are high concentration hours,
| my data isn't as good for non heads down work.
| sanbor wrote:
| What values do you use for each pomodoro, short break and long
| break? Also, do you estimate your tasks into how many pomodoros
| will take?
| kilroy123 wrote:
| 25 minutes a session. After 4 sessions, I take a break for
| 15-30 minutes.
|
| When I'm really in the zone I'll skip the break and keep
| going. Then I'll take ~15.
| istorical wrote:
| 25 minutes then 5 minute break with extended break(15-30)
| after 4? Or you mean 25 work, 25, work, 25 work, 25 work,
| 15-30 break?
| cheetor wrote:
| I also do ~4 hours of concentrated work first thing in the
| morning. As my day progresses, my head gets filled with all
| kinds of shit (good and bad), and it's really detrimental to
| not just focus but overall output.
|
| In the morning, my mind is fresh and more-or-less distraction
| free and I feel hyper-focused even without caffeine. Also, by
| doing a lot in the morning, motivation stacks up and "wins"
| convert into more "wins" throughout the day
|
| After that long session, I'll usually take an hour break. I try
| to make sure the last half hour of the break isn't filled with
| any instantly gratifying content (reddit, yt, etc) so my mind
| isn't chasing another hit of dopamine when I resume my work.
| Anecdotally, I feel like this helps me
|
| Whenever I loath doing a task, I tell myself to do it for 5
| minutes and if I still don't feel like doing it, then I can do
| something else. It's a pretty common technique and works
| wonderfully for me. Something about my pride and not wanting to
| give up after 5 minutes helps me power through
| iamnotwhoiam wrote:
| Someone like me!
|
| I've been doing the exact same thing for about a year now. My
| quality of work is up, and so is my salary. I have more time
| for family and hobbies.
|
| Whenever I'm stuck on a problem and my four hours are up, I
| right down my thoughts and the next morning I find the solution
| quickly.
|
| Either you and I are special, hyperproductive but easily
| exhausted workers, or everyone else is just pretending to work
| twice as long.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| It think it's a combination? No way anyone is working
| productively for 8 hours. It's not just possible in the long
| term.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| 4 hours, in my experience, is the absolute maximum that a
| motivated person can work on a heavy task in a day. I can't
| cite any study for this, but it's a number that I've seen used
| by really solid teams, internally. Billable hours, of course,
| exceed 4 hours-- but that's because billable hours includes
| "boilerplate" work.
|
| 4 hours is A LOT. You can get a lot of stuff done in 4 hours. 4
| hours x 5 days a week can be sustained long term as well
| provided that the remainder butt-in-seat work isn't too
| draining/demoralizing.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| >Every day at work, I show up and do a minimum of 4 straight
| hours of concentrated and focused work.
|
| It's a lot TBH. I'd laugh loudly if I can do that everyday. 4
| hours of focused work most likely will deleptes all of my
| energy and leaves me drained after work.
|
| On my side. I work as a BI developer so a lot of time is spent
| in meeting. A day with 3 hours of meeting is fairly common but
| most of the time I don't need to speak so I mute the mic and
| only turn my focus to them when someone called me for advice.
|
| A lot of time is wasted on things such as waiting for answers
| from a team in HQ which is located at the other side of the
| earth. Sometimes someone puts up a shiny new framework with
| quirky DSL and dumps it on our team with little documentation
| and you can foresee how much time it takes to "learn" and
| "unlearn" later. I'd recommend avoiding working in a team that
| has zero control of the tools and processes.
| sgt wrote:
| Not sure I would be able to cope with 3 hr meetings on a
| regular basis. I try to keep meetings as short as possible
| (15-30 min), and to have an e-mail thread already having
| taken place in anticipation of the call.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah I do the same. Some of the meetings are not avoidable
| though considering I'm in the middle of requirements
| taking. For the rest I just ait through.
|
| It was a lot worse when I worked in the analytic team.
| Pretty much everyday is 3 hours of meeting at least.
| ausbah wrote:
| I find a to-do is mostly useful for just tracking all the things
| that pop into my head
| everyone wrote:
| Perhaps being so fixated on productivity is not healthy. The
| whole concept was really only introduced to society along with
| mass industrialization. It seems that for most of history in most
| of the world most humans have spent a lot of their timing just
| sitting around, hanging out. I'd guess we're designed to do a
| certain amount of that each day.
| polote wrote:
| There is only one way to get things done [1]. It is just DO and
| stop thinking about it or how to do it.
|
| Todo apps will not help you get things done, they will only help
| you accumulate much more tasks that you can do.
|
| I mean how can some people think that software will make them do
| more ? The app will not do the task for you.
|
| Contrary to what the title states, some people get things done.
| But productivity is the same thing as loosing weight. It is very
| easy to understand what to do, (eat less/work (real work) more
| hours). But there a tons of business trying to sell you something
| to achieve it. If you want to get things done, just do it. I
| don't know what else I can tell you
|
| [1] https://blog.luap.info/the-only-way-to-be-productive.html
| tshaddox wrote:
| That article seems a bit silly to me. Of course the way to do
| more things is to do more things. That doesn't mean "how?"
| isn't a reasonable question. For example, it could be helpful
| to read tips for inventorying how exactly I spend my time, to
| help me identify areas where I'm spending more time than I had
| realized.
|
| This article reads like "reading about how to get better at
| weightlifting won't help you, because the only way to lift a
| heavy weight is to literally lift a heavy weight."
| polote wrote:
| The problem is that "how?" doesnt have any convincing answer.
| People who are GTDoners are not more motivated by the things
| they do than other people. The only difference is they do the
| work and spend the less time as possible thinking how to work
| more, how to be faster, ...
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Should be "We Still Don't Get Everything Done". Obvious point,
| but it is crucial to recognize. Lots of stuff gets done, just not
| everything you thought would. Which is why TODO lists can be
| useful (for me, anyway), but don't get any more complicated than
| just a list (I use a chalkboard for non-work and a txt file for
| work).
|
| 1) I need to not forget to do this thing
|
| 2) but I can only do one thing right now
|
| 3) put the other things on the list, and start working on the one
| at the top
|
| 4) occasionally, the list gets too long, so delete things that
| you've decided will not get done after all
|
| That's all I expect a todo list to do for me, and that is plenty.
| The less baroque, the better, and frankly it doesn't merit an
| "app".
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I've found that GTD apps, TODOs, and even simple task lists, are
| rarely effective for me.
|
| That does not mean they aren't effective. The Japanese
| corporation for which I worked, lived by them, and they were
| _very_ effective.
|
| But for me, I seldom need more than a couple of reminders on
| sticky notes, on my desk.
| regularfry wrote:
| I think if it was only a couple of reminders, sticky notes
| would be a general solution. It's when it's double-digits of
| _stuff_ that you need something more structured.
| throwslackforce wrote:
| If we were actually interested in getting things done, we'd get
| them done, right? It seems like the core of the problem is people
| having priorities imposed on them that don't match their own,
| actual priorities. When people aren't getting things done,
| they're usually doing other things, their actual priorities, not
| staring idly into space. (Usually. And maybe staring into space
| is fine too).
|
| If your well-being or the well-being of others is at stake, then
| you got to do what you got to do, and "get things done". But a
| lot of this sounds like people feeling guilty about not going the
| extra mile on things they don't actually care about.
|
| EDIT: Wow I guess this struck a nerve.
|
| EDIT 2: And I think "people having priorities imposed on them"
| would also include people imposing priorities on themselves
| without sufficient self-reflection.
| throwaway803453 wrote:
| The YC credo is about building something people want and shipping
| your MVP ASAP.
|
| What I see time and time again with teams and people prelaunch is
| a lack of a catalyst to ship their MVP. I've met many people who
| have an idea and their MVP is 95% complete. Then things stall and
| feature creep sets in for three reasons:
|
| 1) Your MVP will, by design, have technical debt. No one likes
| debt.
|
| 2) Releasing means a shift from being a dev/engineer to being a
| marketer and building the company that builds the product. And
| you do this while also working on your technical debt. If your
| sales stall, then you are stuck in "should I spend more money on
| time on marketing" hell.
|
| 3) Anyone who can build something people want and create an MVP
| has numerous alternatives for certain income.
|
| So as much as I'd like to ship my MVP next month I procrastinate
| since I am also a consultant who bills at good hourly rate and I
| can just do that instead. _Good_ isn 't just the enemy of
| _great_. _Good_ is also a great hedge against the time waste of
| building a business that is no fun to operate and isn 't
| profitable which is why many MVPs never ship.
|
| Edit: typos, clarity
| tvirosi wrote:
| What if apps aren't the solution to getting more will power.
| LVB wrote:
| >Every to-do list is, ultimately, about death.
|
| This succinctly captures something I've thought more about as
| I've gotten older (now 47). This is especially true around the
| "Someday/Maybe" category in my system. Some items in there are
| themselves nearly teenagers! And it is sobering how few of these
| bigger items actually get done or even thought about in a year.
| But at least I'm checking off dozens of minutia tasks each week
| :/
| acituan wrote:
| Good. When we die, we will still have a giant todo list, and
| that's OK. That doesn't mean we haven't done things, it just
| means the list didn't capture the entirety of our desires and
| goals.
|
| Maybe the point of writing them down is mostly reflective; to
| contextualize them as much as possible and do the ones that we
| find most important by some unconscious heuristic. That means
| there will always be uncompleted things.
|
| Also we have to see when we itemize things to do, we also
| objectify ourselves as a doer of those things. Which is OK for
| making things graspable, but ultimately we are not mere doer of
| things, we are humans in an existential context.
|
| Maybe it is a good thing that we left todo items unchecked, maybe
| that is our protest against being reduced too much, maybe that
| procrastination is an attempt at gaining our humanity back, maybe
| that resistive Netflix binge has some unconscious meaning that
| needs to be honored.
| planet-and-halo wrote:
| Thanks for writing this, it's so dead on. Becoming adept at
| mastering your time, attention, and effectiveness is
| worthwhile, but so often we mistake the trees for the forest
| and get caught up in turning ourselves into little efficiency
| machines.
| neilv wrote:
| > _You can blame Zeigarnik again. The mere act of making a to-do
| list relieves so much itchy stress that it can, paradoxically,
| reduce the pressure to actually get stuff done. "People feel that
| when they put all their tasks somewhere, they've already done
| most of the work," Perchik says. But it's an illusion. The pile
| of work is still there._
|
| I suspect that this effect can work for you, without working
| against you.
|
| For personal (non-work-project) tasks, I've been using a
| variation of Todo.txt throughout the day, for both "to-do list"
| task management, and scheduling appointments and reminders.
|
| I suppose this Zeigarnik effect described by the article might be
| helpful, and not defeated, partly due to the priorities assigned
| the tasks.
|
| Tasks are assigned priorities A-Z. I usually only end up looking
| at priorities A-C (occasionally D).
|
| One effect of this might be that prioritizing a task as D or E
| gets it off my mind (thanks, Zeigarnik)... _but_ another effect
| is that I keep being reminded of the A-C tasks on days that I
| could do them, so they don 't feel done (take that, Zeigarnik).
|
| (Some notes on my variation on Todo.txt, and a snippet of Emacs
| Lisp that helps support it, is at:
| https://www.neilvandyke.org/todotxt/ )
| moksly wrote:
| The more project management tools I have to work with, the less
| likely I am to work for or with a company.
|
| I have a somewhat similar stance on software architecture. Sure,
| I'm TOGAF certified but if you actually expect me to work with
| notation correct Archimare/UML/whatever and not just draw boxes
| on a napkin you're either insane or sell a product with no
| competition.
|
| This is anecdotal of course, but after 30 years of working with
| hundreds of companies to supply our municipality with software,
| we have yet to see a correlation between quality and "best
| practices". It doesn't matter if companies do this or that
| testing and use the full confluence suite or if they just pull
| spaghetti out of their asses and support is a phone call... the
| quality is the same over time, hell, often we get more from the
| spaghetti companies than the "best practice" ones. You might
| think that it's a short term thing and that the spaghetti and no
| testing catches up, but it doesn't. Maybe because we don't have
| to fund those 8 people, that you never really learn the role off
| but it sure isn't technical, that sit in on every meeting as
| opposed to talking directly with the spaghetti slinger and a
| sales person? I'm not sure, and I'd love to tell people that
| following this or that "best practice" is the way to go, but
| that's just not what our data shows.
| ohthehugemanate wrote:
| I see it as a similar problem as we (humans) have with all
| systems: we mistake the system for the actual solution. It's
| not.
|
| You need to focus on the real problem at hand, and devise/adapt
| a correct solution in context. Systems and frameworks provide
| helpful tools and templates, but they all require contextual
| adaptation.
|
| FWIW this is what I like about the foundations of Agile for
| project management. The manifesto points all direct you away
| from your tools and processes and towards the actual problem.
| eg "People over process," "working code over documentation,"
| etc. Basically the people on the team should focus on working
| software, communicating with the customer, and adapting to
| change. Their processes, documentation, contracts, and plans
| should all be aligned to that solution, not the other way
| around.
|
| And out of that... we got millions or scrum certificate
| weilding alcolytes who will tell you that if your project
| failed, it's because you didn't do their system religiously
| enough. God certainly has a sense of irony.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This is not unusual. Something like ISO9001 Quality
| Management is literally a checklist of pleasant aspirations
| which leaves companies to define the details for themselves.
|
| So as long as you define what "leadership" or "customer
| satisfaction" (and the rest) mean to you, and you have a
| vaguely plausible but not necessarily effective process that
| ticks each of the boxes, you have a quality management
| process. And you can apply for - and will probably get -
| formal quality management certification.
|
| In reality you can have zero actual leadership or customer
| satisfaction. But you have a _process_ - so OK.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah a lot of companies go like "we're going agile" and just
| do the tools bit with Jira and its Kanban and rigid time
| management.
|
| It's more like ticking boxes and pretending to know what
| they're doing than actual agile project management.
|
| So now we're stuck with a lot of overhead crap and even more
| workload. And the system actually slows us down when we try
| to adapt to a changing environment.
|
| Problem is mainly that this happened because the director of
| project management really liked the reports from Jira and
| thus the main reason for it all is to get as much data as
| possible in there (notice how 'accurate data' does not seem
| to be a focus :) )
| albertzeyer wrote:
| I don't exactly understand your criticism on best practices.
|
| You seem to imply that UML or other project management software
| are considered best practices. I have never heard that. Or
| rather the opposite. _Not_ using UML is currently considered as
| best practice.
|
| But maybe it depends who you ask.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah I studied UML during uni. It took a long time to 'click'
| and when it did I learned some useful concepts from it. Only
| then did OOP really make sense.
|
| However it's way too laborious using it for everything and it
| becomes a burden when things get complicated. For simple
| things it just doesn't really help because they're simple
| anyway.
|
| As a learning tool I think it was great. In production? Well
| I use it every day. The book props up my keyboard on my desk
| which happens to be 2cm too low :)
| Mary-Jane wrote:
| It's usually government types (DoD, FDA) pushing for this
| stuff, and lots of it. The thinking appears to be, "The more
| the paperwork, the better the product".
| quartesixte wrote:
| Credit due where credit is due: these project management
| software companies have done a good job of convincing people
| they need it.
|
| I've taken to using tools that most closely mimic notepad+pen
| or whiteboard+marker. Increasingly I am finding that a physical
| whiteboard, markers, and post-its are good enough. And if you
| need to create backups, the image quality on any smartphone is
| very, very good these days.
|
| The more time spent working on the thing that manages your
| work, the less you are working!
| p_l wrote:
| To be honest, after playing with stuff like Enterprise
| Architect, and even JIRA - they could be game changer in many
| places I worked in.
|
| But that would require a lot less gatekeepng and other
| artificial moats around them, and possibly a rather more open
| organisation model which wouldn't fly with middle management
| (even if your specific adjacent middle managers would like
| to, they don't operate in vacuum). And that's before you hit
| cost reasons. Or _cost of training_ , especially since
| companies really, really don't like training people.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| If you've ever worked in manufacturing, real Kanban boards
| are messy but organized for the people to know what's going
| on. Every Kanban board I've seen is unique in its own ways.
| Some use post-it notes and some specialized tokens that
| magentically attach to the board. Design of the board and
| layout can vary widely, but generally when you see one, it is
| a workshop organization tool made by people who feel
| comfortable using it.
|
| Take away is that just because they're not using an off-the-
| shelf project management / WIP management tool, doesn't mean
| they're not organized.
| bluGill wrote:
| Whiteboards are better in every way but one : a whiteboard
| doesn't sync with anything central or remote. You have to
| decide if this matters to you. If yes get a tool, if not
| get a whiteboard.
| Arcanum-XIII wrote:
| I've seen manager using the physical board to lock people in
| a room at their mercy... or to create busy work for them, to
| justify their existence. That's seriously messed up.
|
| The whiteboard was good to move forward a discussion, explain
| concept and other niceties. To organize work ? Hell no.
| colechristensen wrote:
| What they do is give middle management something to do.
|
| Often questionably necessary, middle management has a hard
| time doing _something_ when engineers understand the product
| and upper management has the right balance of setting
| direction and entrusting decisions to the makers. So they
| start asking the engineers to do things and get upper
| management on the train of wanting reporting. Doing _that_
| with pen-and-paper engineering and people with context is
| HARD... so all of these tools exist to make this middle layer
| of doing work better.
|
| And arguably unnecessary people earn a lot of money by
| convincing themselves and others that they _are_ necessary,
| so companies get to be organized to have these high overhead
| tools to support this high overhead style of organization.
|
| Now to be honest some level of organization _is_ necessary,
| and _becomes_ necessary as the enterprise and product grows
| in complexity, but very very few people work long enough or
| with a diverse enough set of organizations to be able to see
| what is necessary and when and what is not.
|
| If you hire people and put them in a position and tell them
| they have to work a certain number of hours _they will find
| or create work to do_. Oftentimes this work is not better
| than doing nothing but the WASP work-ethic and general
| cultural norms really can 't handle the idea that smart,
| important, useful people can provide the most value sometimes
| by not doing anything until they are needed.
| xcambar wrote:
| > general cultural norms really can't handle the idea that
| smart, important, useful people can provide the most value
| sometimes by not doing anything until they are needed.
|
| Thank you for this comment. I have had this is mind for
| quite some time but I never could phrase it in such a
| clear, articulate, phrasing.
| Lightbody wrote:
| Say what you will about Amazon culture in general (I've never
| worked there)... but one of their leadership principals is Dive
| Deep
|
| > Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details,
| audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote
| differ. No task is beneath them.
|
| IMO this particular trait correlates well with a need for less
| process / project management software. I really believe if more
| people did this companies would be better off.
|
| Note: this isn't the same thing as micromanaging but I
| understand why some people think it is.
| reedjosh wrote:
| I'm there now (for only a short time), and I'm remarkably
| struck by how good the culture is, and it's the exact
| opposite of their reputation. Maybe team dependent, but I'm
| pretty happy with my manager.
| krazyk8s wrote:
| I'm having the same experience myself. I've been in the
| role for less than a year, and the culture is completely
| opposite of what I expected. My team and managers are
| fantastic, the workload is less than a number of my
| previous jobs, its been one of the better jobs I've ever
| held (Although for all I know I've just had extremely bad
| luck with jobs for the last few decades and not realized
| it!).
| Zedronar wrote:
| I worked for two years at Amazon. My managers were not diving
| deep at all. At least not more than any other average manager
| in any other average company.
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| Dive deep is more for engineers. Managers can only go so
| deep because they must be broad. Yes, I know it says
| "leadership". I was there for 4 years.
| Lightbody wrote:
| I appreciate the point you're trying to make, but I
| disagree with this.
|
| It's something that has frustrated me, as a manager, when
| fellow managers said it to me. I feel like it gives
| permission to managers to detach themselves from the
| reality of their organization.
|
| The trick is to know WHEN to dive deep, because you are
| right that managers also have to maintain a broad
| perspective.
|
| But being able to sniff out problems and then dive into
| them has always been the hallmark of a great
| manager/executive, at least in my own experiences.
| clon wrote:
| Thank you for writing this. It exactly aligns with my
| experience.
|
| When such a rant actually feels sensible and pragmatic, there
| must be something seriously wrong.
|
| I don't mean actual engineers wringing bug free code for a
| space telescope attitude control system. Seemingly they have it
| figured out - their code does not seem to fall down at a higher
| rate than bridges or office buildings. They have a method.
|
| But this method, whatever they implement, is surely too costly
| for us regular chumps, at least provided your employer, as you
| put it, has competitors.
| robocat wrote:
| For anyone wondering what "Archimare" refers to:
| https://www.visual-paradigm.com/guide/archimate/what-is-arch...
| jdrmar wrote:
| This resonates a lot with me. I've tried so many todo apps, but
| in the end I always returned to a simple piece of paper.
|
| It did bother me that paper is not very flexible, so I'm
| experimenting with a digital 'paper to-do' version. If you're
| curious, check it out at https://can.do :)
|
| Feedback of course most welcome.
| rasengan0 wrote:
| Yay! article validated, tried and true practice: pen and paper
|
| Welcome to the FPN Nuthouse: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/
| cygned wrote:
| I do mise-en-place (preparation) and use TeuxDeux as my todo
| list. It's so super simple but such an effective tool, so
| limiting it's not getting in my way.
|
| I tried everything else, every tool, every technique - nothing
| works for me. I can't even use JIRA at work, I put things in
| TeuxDeux or on a paper list, otherwise I will forget what I need
| to do.
|
| I always wondered if other people had similar challenges. Maybe I
| am too simple for tech productivity tools.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Classic. Users asking for an obvious and predictable feature they
| will never use and that will only taint the app. We throw it in
| because it is obvious and "you gotta have that." Resist.
| 34qlgkaer wrote:
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| imsohappy wrote:
| What if some patriotic soul just shoots Fauci?
|
| Then are we done?
| legrande wrote:
| I swear by The Checklist Manifesto[0]
|
| However, it's worth noting that just because you didn't do that
| one thing on your list, it doesn't mean you're a failure in life.
| A checklist is just a rough guide. You can always delegate or
| delay the more trickier tasks too.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Checklist_Manifesto
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's a great book, but seems more aligned to "doing things
| correctly [preventing errors]" than to "doing things at all
| [preventing procrastination]".
| jvanderbot wrote:
| There's a subtle point in controlling process to prevent
| procrastination vs keeping a list of things to do in hopes
| that helps you ``know what to work on''.
|
| Checklists are great at the former.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Precisely this. Todo lists are a great way to go through
| processes, but a terrible way to plan a day's or month's
| activity.
| truckerbill wrote:
| What is a better way you've found?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I mean, I do have a backlog list, and it is prioritized,
| but my day-to-day follows a process not a todo list. I keep
| a daily checklist of priority things to fit in:
|
| Speak politely, two morning chores, answer all messages
| from my group, workout, read, tinker with something, no
| coffee (I'm quitting), no drinks (I'm cutting down),
| meditate, go outside, update the finances, write in my
| journal.
|
| Each of those is about a 5 minute task or a daily reminder.
| Read and Tinker often lead to hours-long focus sessions.
| The key is to show up every day and remove barriers to
| getting started.
|
| If you want to call that a todo list, that's ok, but I call
| it a process-oriented checklist because of the way I use
| it.
|
| I used to be better about keeping a monthly checklist too,
| but pandemic has removed most the list.
| adolph wrote:
| That sounds semi-similar to the "Seinfeld System," a
| method that highlights daily streaks.
|
| https://jamesclear.com/stop-procrastinating-seinfeld-
| strateg...
| adolph wrote:
| Time blocking is one. If one doesn't structure time and
| context, then todo items can't get done.
|
| Edit:
|
| Here's one implementation by Nir Eyal, author of "Hooked"
| and Indistractable":
|
| https://www.nirandfar.com/schedule-maker/
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Adam Savage uses checklists as a motivational tool. Something
| satisfying about marking things as done. On paper, esp.
|
| I could only find this -- with a link to another wired article:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20263850
| rconti wrote:
| Yep! I use RememberTheMilk, and while I still have tasks that
| are years old, I find it generally helpful. I like the
| confidence of being able to mentally unburden myself of
| remembering things (even if I usually still do) and sometimes
| find myself creating tasks just to check them off, because
| I've done them but hadn't added them to the list-- why not
| feel good about your accomplishments?
|
| The reality is, many tasks, people simply don't want to do!
| Doches wrote:
| Skip to the end of that thought, and just keep a list where
| all you do is write down stuff you've done. Soon you'll
| have trained your brain to look around for stuff to add to
| your "done list"
|
| (I do this, check out https://donel.ist for a kill-your-
| todos-get-stuff-done app I built to help myself do it!)
| slfnflctd wrote:
| A simple text file works great for me. Sometimes things get
| asterisks (or whatever other sophistry I'm hoping in vain
| will help me actually prioritize according to some sort of
| 'master plan'), but in the end what's done just gets "//" in
| front of it and goes in the archive.
|
| I feel it does help me combat feelings of low productivity
| and/or worthlessness at least a little when I can look back
| on all I've completed. Otherwise it's more of this vague
| impression of 'not enough' and the resulting general malaise
| which can all too often become a tar pit.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Sometimes (regularly actually) i'm fascinated about society as a
| system, so much fuzz so much ignorance, so much unknowns and
| noise .. yet it kind works (massive crisis aside).
| alpaca128 wrote:
| The bit about the Zeigarnik effect was interesting, I didn't know
| about it but it does make sense and matches my experience.
|
| But the reason tasks aren't done frequently usually has nothing
| to do with how the to-do list is organised, and I'm not sure why
| the app creators from the beginning of the article were surprised
| about their checklist not being more effective than any other
| method. It still doesn't mean it was useless.
| jampekka wrote:
| For quite a while I have not used any project management or todo-
| lists at all. I usually have a project or few that I need to
| progress and I just keep them in my head. Sometimes I book some
| appointments with some other people which gives me a deadline to
| make some progress. For some crucial chores I may do a temporary
| todo-list of maybe three trivial items.
|
| Not sure how optimal this is, but I've managed to stay employed
| and get most important things done. A plus side is that this has
| a sort of automatic priorization and pruning: I just forget some
| of the things or projects or ideas, and probably there's a
| (negative) correlation between importance and forgetting.
|
| Perhaps people are on average a bit too preoccupied with planning
| and "tasking up" and managing and measuring things to do. I've
| found its often more trouble than it's worth. Also in anything
| more complicated the plan usually collapses quite rapidly, and
| having a strict task-structure etc may well cause people to keep
| the wrong course for too long.
| sesuximo wrote:
| "In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are
| useless, but planning is indispensable." -General Dwight D.
| Eisenhower
| black_13 wrote:
| These softwares exist to create stats to find out who to punish
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Great read. I feel like task lists are really a coping mechanism
| we resort to when we are placed in a somewhat natural situation--
| that is, having an overwhelming load of tasks to complete. Once
| the tasks are "out of mind" and on the list, then they can be
| completed sequentially--sort the tasks by priority, and then do
| them in that order. If to do lists were really about our life
| goals and dreams, then the Seinfeld method still reigns supreme;
| that is, do the most important thing you need to do every day,
| even just a little bit of it, and note how many days in a row
| you've done it.
|
| https://jamesclear.com/stop-procrastinating-seinfeld-strateg...
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| It's a popular technique but apparently Seinfeld did not do
| this, it was a throw away comment that became pop culture.
| miika wrote:
| When I get even little bit excited about something and act on it,
| then it's easy to get things done. No tools required!
|
| Then again, when I'm asked to do something that isn't really my
| thing or something is off, then I just can fix it with some task
| manager (!).
|
| Sure, even the most exciting project may feel little bit boring
| at times but.. as long as it's not all the time I let it be.
|
| It's not healty to be productive all the time.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| I still think David Allen nailed it in _Getting Things Done_. Not
| the system necessarily, but he nailed the diagnosis of why we
| fail to get things done: an inability to be honest with ourselves
| about (1) the full scope and scale of the commitments we make,
| and (2) just how little time and attention we have at our
| disposal in meeting those commitments.
|
| Really, it's the same sort of problem that is described in _The
| Goal_ and _The Phoenix Project_ , but on a personal level.
| Calendar timeboxing feels like a solution that actually addresses
| the real problem, although it is challenging to implement for
| people who are low in conscientiousness (or have ADHD).
| cortesoft wrote:
| Yeah, at the end of the day we simply have more tasks than time
| we are able (willing?) to devote to them.
|
| There is no technique or strategy to have infinite
| productivity.
| Lightbody wrote:
| For what it's worth, we (Reclaim.ai - I'm quoted in the
| article), have a lot of ADHD customers who tell us that we help
| with time blocking on their calendar.
|
| In particular, the fact that we do it automatically seems to be
| the thing they appreciate.
|
| Edit: First time I've ever been downvoted into negative
| territory. Clearly I've embarrassed myself ;P
|
| Is it because of self promotion? I guess... seems weird though
| I/my company are literally part of the article, I replied to a
| specific comment around issues with time blocking for ADHD
| people, and how automation seems to be a solve to the problem
| highlighted by the parent.
|
| _shrug_
| granra wrote:
| Looking at the landing page I can see only Google calendar is
| supported with outlook planned. Is there any chance of
| regular caldav support. I'm interested in the product but I
| use neither Google calendar nor Outlook.
| Lightbody wrote:
| I absolutely desire to support it, but just being realistic
| it is at least 1-2 years off, pending our overall success
| as a company. The market just isn't big enough to justify
| the R&D expense at this stage. Sorry :(
| pySSK wrote:
| Thanks for making Reclaim. I'm struggling with ADD and it's
| something I'm able to stick to in longer spurts than other
| things. I'll reach out on Twitter or by email with some of my
| pain points.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| fwiw, I'm going to check out your service. The article's
| conclusions are philosophical and introspective, but it does
| give the practical finding that calendar time blocking is a
| more effective method than simple todo lists. So trying out
| the latter is an actionable item. Doing a guided meditation
| session to emphasize with my future self would be another
| step- wonder if that's the future of
| meditation/wellness/productivity lifehack fads.
| pantulis wrote:
| In fact the only tool you need for time blocking is Google
| Calendar --or similar. The rest is just convenience, if
| any.
| edoceo wrote:
| Probably the claim about "a lot of ADHD" clients. How do you
| even know? Did you ask?! What percent? Feels real BS to me.
| skrebbel wrote:
| "talk to your customers" is rule number 1 of just about any
| startup, any business even. Why would you doubt that they
| do this?
| [deleted]
| stevehawk wrote:
| I feel like his sentence explains clearly that they are
| reaching to comment/thank them and making the claim when
| they do so?
| Lightbody wrote:
| Nope. Didn't think to ask, in fact. But then they started
| to tell us. Here are two that did so via Twitter:
|
| https://twitter.com/sadbangs/status/1304685594430377985?s=2
| 1
|
| https://twitter.com/etoile/status/1397257456468824065?s=21
| [deleted]
| nuclearnice3 wrote:
| Your reply to pixie was really nice and authentic. It's
| gratifying to know people appreciate what you made!
| tomrod wrote:
| Neat. Do you have integrations with Element?
| Lightbody wrote:
| I don't know what Element is. Tell me more. Integrations
| are a big part of our roadmap this year, so... maybe!
| charles_f wrote:
| This piece focuses on how organizing tasks doesn't increase much
| the chance of doing the tasks, and suggests that other techniques
| than digitalized to-dos yield slightly better returns. One thing
| I think this is missing is that work is hard and time consuming,
| and brain juice and time are limited resources.
|
| 1) You cant do everything. The more I advance in my career, the
| more comfortable I become with abandoning things. It is almost
| the same feeling as deleting dead code. I also realized that
| there's a better chance that I will do something if I enjoy it
| (duh) _or_ if it 's not menial. Tasks that are completely
| pointless still have a chance of being done if they are fun to
| me. Tasks that are neither will likely never be touched unless I
| might get fired for not doing them. What's depressing is that it
| takes some courage to admit defeat and cancel tasks, for some
| reason. Probably the fomo or something like that. But the
| psychological overhead of maintaining a pile of stuff is so high.
| Look at most backlogs, featuring pages after pages of valueless
| features that will never be done and bugs that will never get
| fixed. Yet when you propose a simple rule that we should just
| delete or close anything that had been lingering for more than
| 1y, people look at you like you're crazy
|
| 2) work is hard, and procrastination is real: we are cabled to
| minimize our cognitive expenditure. I think I can do a max of 1
| to 2h per day of hard work, maybe a bit more if it's something I
| really enjoy, and there's probably a weekly cap as well. Doing
| something hard is not something I look forward to (don't put that
| on your resume). So when I pick the todo list, and have a choice
| between "add this fun feature to your pet project" or "define
| goals for next year", guess which will be done, and which will be
| postponed every single time.. . I think the only way of doing
| these harder tasks is by making them easier, less ambiguous, time
| bound, more fun, i.e lower the entry cost of the task. That's
| where some of the value of GTD and such methods resides - by
| defining a mechanism that transform "stuff" into actionable
| items. But even that is hard. I'm almost 20y in, yet I still
| struggle to abide to a strict process.
|
| Work is hard.
| loufe wrote:
| I generally agree with your points, but 1 to 2 hours? When I'm
| off-rotation I still find the time for at least 3-4 hours of
| intense productive work in the day, and on-rotation I am
| focused oftentimes for 10+ hours in a day. Perhaps it's
| different levels of mental engagement but I'm curious why you
| say, what seems to me to be, such low amounts.
| sn wrote:
| A todo list is not a plan to get things done.
|
| If you're serious about getting more done, tracking how you spend
| your all your time is worth trying as a starting point. It allows
| you to identify where your time actually goes and what you need
| to do to prioritize differently (and if that's even possible.)
|
| I try to live a spreadsheet driven life. I have a workbook with a
| sheet for my todo items with due dates if applicable, a sheet for
| both prospective and retrospective time tracking, a sheet for
| things I need to buy, etc. all in one place so I can pull tasks
| in as part of weekly planning. The week usually doesn't go
| according to plan but I think I still get more done than if I
| didn't go through the process. Weekly planning also gives me
| opportunities to start over fairly frequently if I fall off the
| wagon.
| Doches wrote:
| This is _exactly_ why I stopped keeping TODO lists, and started
| keeping DONE lists instead.
|
| What's a done list? Think of it as an anti-TODO list: your DONE
| list is where you write down everything that you've, well, done.
| You know that little dopamine kick you get from filing a neatly-
| tagged TODO or marking off something that you've finished? A done
| list is just that, and the only way to use it is to train
| yourself to stop organising and just...get stuff done.
|
| I love it so much I built my own done list app: https://donel.ist
| . It's 100% free, and there's even an API to play around with if
| that's your thing.
| bityard wrote:
| I don't know why you're getting downvoted, but this method is
| the only thing I've been able to stick with for more than a few
| days.
|
| I have so many things I both have to do and want to do that
| keeping a written list of them is pointless and demotivating.
| Only time-sensitive things get written down, and that's just so
| I don't forget them before it's too late.
|
| The beauty of this is that it doesn't need an app, just a
| notebook or text editor.
| [deleted]
| indiv0 wrote:
| I resonate with this, _a lot_.
|
| TODO lists don't work for me at all. I can't seem to remember
| to actually check the damn things for what to do next. The
| overhead of maintaining them also eats up time.
|
| The closest thing I've found that works to motivate and keep me
| on track is SaveMyTime, which is a time tracking app. I used it
| in a similar manner to how you describe done lists. I tracked
| exactly what I've done, every minute of every day. The killer
| feature of SMT is that it forces you to fill out what you've
| done prior to unlocking your phone screen. Unlike TODO lists, I
| have no problem checking my phone frequently :)
|
| This meant that I always had a log of where my time was going,
| what areas of my life needed more attention, where I was
| spending my time when procrastinating, etc.
|
| The very action of seeing that "What did you do in the last 15
| minutes?" reminder helps kick my brain into "That's a good
| question, what _should_ I be doing now? " mode.
|
| Unfortunately I've since switched to iOS so SMT isn't an option
| anymore. I can't seem to find a similar app. Most of the
| existing time tracking apps expect you to actually set timers,
| which defeats the purpose. Damn Apple and their OS restrictions
| mean that no one can make an app that lets you show a screen
| like that prior to unlocking either.
|
| I've settled for writing my own, private app as a replacement.
| It shows a widget on the home screen (as in-your-face as you
| can get on iPhones) with the same features as SMT. "X many
| minutes since you last logged your time, here is a list of
| likely things you were working on".
| throw20210730a wrote:
| https://archive.is/5uo8v
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