I don’t think it’s a question of whether or not to keep a TODO list because having more than one thing to do means you have a TODO list. The list may only exist in your mind, but you have one.
What I get Jeff railing at is that it’s too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that some technology or technique is going to magically turn your mental TODO list into hyper-productivity. That’s never going to happen. If your mental TODO list is chaotic then you’re not going to be able to tame it with technology. You need to tame it first and then use technology to augment where your brain fails you.
Even simple technology like pencil and paper can make your TODO list persistent, something that your brain isn’t very good at doing. Software with reminders turns your TODO list from polling (going over it periodically to find the next thing to do) to event driven (being notified when the next thing is up). Software can also help you store meta data with your TODO list, e.g. the URL where the information is or the phone number of the contact. These are all things that a TODO list outside your head can help with.
Productivity porn is really putting the cart before the horse. Get your TODO list organized before you search for technology. Or, more realistically, start simple (pen and paper) and only go to the next step when your TODO list is ready for it.
The fact that you are talking about scrapping a TO-DO list and focusing on the 3 most important things you need to do every day makes me believe that J.D Meier’s Agile Results would be to your liking. http://gettingresults.com/wiki/Getting_Started_with_Agile_Results
I do NOT agree at all with this article. I desperately need a TODO list everyday. I tend to forget things quite alot. And with the job that I have, it is absolutely imperative that i maintain a todo list. I have a team of software developers working with me and they are working on various modules. Therefore, starting from who would be doing what to writing emails to helping another team to writing some more emails to conducting a meeting to knowledge sharing session, i need a todo list. It saved my life actually. Otherwise i would have been out of a job.
I agree with the spirit of the post. We all need to do better at saying no and shutting down unsuccessful projects.
But I will say that my your brain and your gut have utterly failed my in the past.
The whole point of todo lists is to manage the unimportant things. Just because your brain views something as unimportant doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to (eventually) get done.
We all procrastinate. I’ll say that there’s value in at least knowing what you’re procrastinating about.
The problem with TODO List is that they’re a list.
While what we probably need is a map of what we must do and already done, so we could choose the most important task.
Here’s what I do, I use MindMap tools (XMind) to map general objective that I must do and from there I branch to every task that need to be done.
I recently read an article on HBR with a similar sentiment towards to-do list apps.
The author there suggests trying to “live in a calendar” instead of in a to-do list (because, so he thinks, they don’t work).
But I think it’s a good thing that there is such a variety of to-do list apps one can choose from: for those who do use to-do lists, everyone can find something for his or her taste! For example, I’ve somehow settled with Deed.
I have been obsessive about todo lists for years (todoist.com is my drug of choice). As an experiment after reading this post, I have been going without a personal todo list for the past 3 days. I’m surprised how much I like it. It hasn’t made me less productive, it has made me less obsessive about doing stuff that didn’t need to get done anyway.
I’m not ready to go todo-less for my work stuff, but so far I’d say this is the most useful coding horror post I’ve ever read.
I tried a todo list application for my personal life. It bugged me about tasks I already knew I had to accomplish until I finally uninstalled the bloody thing.
I use a todo list at work. It serves two purposes: to give me a queue of work that I previously thought of (and it’s actual useful work, stuff I decided was necessary) so I have stuff to do after the current set of tasks, and to log things I’ve finished. (I move finished tasks to another section of the file rather than removing them entirely.)
My work todo list has about fifteen unaccomplished tasks right now. I wouldn’t be able to remember all that, I think, and I’m not going to empty it in the next week.
I can remember the tasks I’m currently working on, and the next thing I need to work on when I’m almost finished. But that’s only two or three things.
Lists are awesome. But you have to organize them better than just the one gigantic list. Once you organize them, the list is freedom. You SAVE a TON of time not having to remember the same thing over and over again or figure out what you are working on.
I don’t know, but I have too much going on to keep it all straight.
Being one of the chaps who has built to do list apps in the past I think what you’re trying to say is that everyone is different!
Some people need lists to keep track of their lives, others prefer to live life without them. And you’re the later. At least in this digital age we have choice and competition.
From a developers POV building a todo list application has helped me learn new skills, techniques and programming languages. http://todomvc.com is wicked for that sort of thing.
Aside from loving the phrase “productivity porn site” (another niche that’s yet to be exploited) I actually came back to this post after a while to say this:
You’re right. But, you’re not.
I get up knowing exactly what I want to do. But that’s not what I get to do. What I get to do is go to my job and do it, all the while wishing it were something else. So, I make goals to get out of this job and into the next, and they become a to-do list, because I come home, spend every minute I can with my kids, and am pretty much brain dead when I get time for myself. I like knowing what goals I set for myself.
And, when the kids are in bed, I like knowing where I can look to remember what goals I’d set for myself.
So, yeah, I know what I want to do. When I have time to do stuff, I’ve often forgotten it.
In my experience, it’s effectively terrible to just start a todo list for the sake of a todo list. You need some rules to manage it and especially clean it up. After trying a ton of things in my job the following works best for me :
Maintain todo lists for specific projects and developments (currently I have four)
Use only a text file. Everything more complex, like Outlook tasks, gets annoying and forces you to spend more time tweaking the task options than doing the job.
Every day before starting work, write up from memory everything you would like to do today. Sort between long-term and short-term. Write up important things in your to do list, and do the rest.
Every once in a while, go back to the todo list and clean up/move the things you did. If an item has been there for ages, it’s not important so remove it/mark it as not necessary/rework it.
Don’t look at your lists more than twice or once a week. You should know the short-term stuff by heart.
With this, you should be able to have lists containing only the most important and up-to-date stuff. For me it works quite well, it helps me keep track of what I want to do in the weeks to come without having every minute item like single bugs in it.
Great article. I couldn’t agree more. Lists are just a way of avoiding the hard parts: finding the actual time to do it, prioritizing, and saying no. If it really needs to get done, schedule time for it on your calendar now. Which often means rescheduling or even canceling less important stuff.
For people saying they have bad memories, there’s nothing like an actual scheduled appointment on your calendar to jog the memory. “I need to renew my license sometime this weekend” is just a way of procrastinating. “I’ve set aside 2 hours at 3pm on Saturday” gets it done.
Lists of things that must get done in order to complete a project? A todo list is very much the wrong software to document and manage requirements, issues, and defects, or even the steps required to complete a regular procedure.
The “I maintain fighter aircraft and you better believe lists are important.” comment scares the crap out of me. I sure as hell hope those lists are in a shared and backed up organizationn-wide software and / or calendar and not on someone’s todo list on their iphone.
i am quite new to this cool coding stuff, i am student just trying to figure out how to be better programmer and mathematician, and at same time i am making games, and to do all that i have been making to do lists, but always they fail and i end up making my lists better again and again(only lists get better not anything else)… i love coding and making games, but i haven’t given enough time to anything…
this article does reflect what i am going through… maybe i need to relax and start believing myself and just plunge into this awesome place and really put all those copies and apps away … this was really cool article… and i know what i should do now… your blog is really inspirational…
Just saw this on HN. One question I find helpful in asking is: If I’m not doing the MOST important thing, right now, why not? It’s an interesting question, because often I’m not - and a to-do list can help me figure that out, because my mind is inconsistent. Writing down is sort of thinking. However, I think the author has a good point, becuase these lists grow into prospective tasks, or lists of shoulds and oughts, not real things. Anyway, really enjoyed the post. Thanks!
