

Use your brain to its fullest: Biological Task List - kineticac
http://artchang.com/biological-task-list

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dasil003
If this works for you, then more power to you. I ran my life with nothing more
than an occasional daily todo list for years. The thing is though, once you
get busier, once your startup is growing into the double-digit employees, once
you start receiving 100+ significant emails a day, once you have a family, the
stuff that _has_ to get done starts to outstrip your mental capacity (at least
it did for me). And then that's when the stress starts building.

I am not a fan of productivity porn. Ironically I think it's often just a way
that people procrastinate from what really matters. But eventually I had to
give in to the fact that however I used to cope wasn't working anymore. I
recently picked up David Allen's Getting Things Done, and I'm applying it
using OmniFocus. The thing I like about it is that it acknowledges the mental
baggage that information workers carry around, and it provides a practical
system to free your mind from remembering tons of tasks (something which we
are not evolutionarily set up for). It's hard to overstate what this has done
for my stress level and creativity. It's not about maintaining lists, it's
about freeing up my RAM.

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blauwbilgorgel
The brain sucks at keeping a todo list. GTD means committing it to paper. When
memorized list items start to dissipate, stress and insecurity increases. You
remember that you had to do something, but you forgot what that something was.
You can't trust the brain to keep a simple todo list, yet the OP tells us to
do just that.

Though if you do want to train your brain to memorize objects, I'd try to
master the Memory Palace technique. The lazy could even visualize writing down
todo items on a simple piece of paper.

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rw
A task list should enhance your productivity by offloading bookkeeping. That's
it. If you need people to yell at you (as the OP says) to determine priority,
you are probably working in a painful and interrupt-driven way.

Here's my method (for writing software):

    
    
      1) Blank sheet of paper (8am).
      2) Figure out one thing to do, and write it down on just one line.
      3) Finish that thing.
      4) Check that item off, and write down the next task *before you put down your pen*.
      5) Goto 3.
    

This is how I stay focused without trying to forecast too far into the future.

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DFectuoso
This is pretty much my routine, except I have an extra step: While I am
working on that thing, if I find a really important thing that needs to be
taken care of, I write it down as the next task.

That way if anyone interrupts me or if I find a important refactoring or think
of something important I get to remember it (and do it) without being
distracted at that moment.

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fuzzmeister
I use a todo list app (Things) for everything _except_ my work. The post is
right that you tend to remember things that you care about, but unfortunately
my time cannot be entirely filled with things I care about.

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Jarred
This is a much better lecture on this topic. Raundy Pausch was an awesome
speaker. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0>

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kineticac
thanks for the link!

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noahlt
It is notable that this idea is the exact opposite of GTD - in GTD you write
everything down to eliminate stress. Here, you use your stress to help
yourself prioritize.

