
Death by To Do lists - messel
http://www.victusspiritus.com/2011/02/23/death-by-to-do-lists/
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RiderOfGiraffes
I'm confused. Is it just me, or is this just a list of "Look at all the things
I have to do!" Is there really any insight here? Did I really just waste 40
seconds (including following one of the links) and not find the nugget of
information that will improve my life?

What have I missed?

~~~
messel
You're perception is correct.

It's a public admission of slipping and not following my own advice due to a
lack of discipline in areas of interest. My apologies if there was no value
added.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
OK - noted. What I'd really like to see is whether you have any ideas for
doing something about it.

Since I wrote "t-" [1] I've found that I've been paying attention to that list
of things I've said I'll do. Probably that will fade and I'll start to ignire
it, but then I'll probably spend an hour hacking another novel (to me) tool
that gets me back on track.

Discipline isn't enough- it slides into procrastination. I find that novelty
brings me back.

How 'bout you?

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2241491>

~~~
messel
One of the problems I've had with various to do list hacks is that task
priority and completion changed over the life of the list. In addition
coordinating group tasks doesn't have a natural fit with planning personal
activities.

Large tasks morphed over time into long term goals, and never left the list.
Actually I preferred those because they aided navigating smaller decisions on
how to spend my time, without having a discrete blob for each task. "Is this
task helping me achieve my long term goal, if so how and how much?" More on
this later (the text file task list).

Quick history of my relationship to task lists:

When I started my first push towards a functioning product (and what I hoped
would be a real company) I used p2, a wordpress blog theme for coordinating
group activity.

I combined that with emails and filters by recipient to keep track of ideas
that were plausible and consistent with the driving product idea (relevant ads
based on social streams).

Over time my email usage as a task list grew into many different tabs (gmail)
and information gathering/interests intermixed with project tasks (bad idea).
I became bogged down with what I thought at the time were relevant tutorials,
docs, and ideas but later proved to be of limited value or wild goose chases
down implausible technical paths.

My technical cofounder (he had four years of web development under his belt in
2009, I had a few months) coordinated our product and coding activities with
lighthouse milestones and tickets. Those worked fine for well defined
objectives, but ended up decaying too slowly based on our understanding of
project direction. Eventually we abandoned the lighthouse ticket approach to
email coordination and screen sharing.

At that point I relied on a simple text file to keep track of my top handful
of project priorities (and nothing else) and worked through them one a time. I
could rearrange the order on the fly as specific tasks became more important
(overhauling an ad widget's design, redesigning the interface to be more
attractive to visitors vs. hosts). Those tasks morphed into priorities that
served as a filter for irrelevant vs focused and necessary actions.

In our busiest periods (late 2009/early 2010) email and text files weren't
enough. Even priority lists felt inadequate and I stopped regularly wrestling
with the lists. At that point I naturally realized the idea, when it comes to
startups lists there can be only one. One thing has to stand apart and be
doggedly pursued until it's finished and proven valuable, or discarded and
proven a false alarm or too difficult to handle with current resources.
[http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/07/18/when-it-comes-to-
st...](http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/07/18/when-it-comes-to-startup-
tasks-there-can-be-only-one/)

We tried several different ideas and Tyler has become a formidable web hacker,
while I've gained some technical chops (I've coded algorithms/sims in c++ for
15 years but only recently added web development) and continue to refine my
product focus and understanding of market needs. Unfortunately our product
ideas and implementations didn't pan out. After actively pushing for a year
without results we parted ways and are still friends.

At the end of 2010 I took a break from web development but came back to it
with the new year. Since then my personal task list (and backlog of desired
activities) has become sloppy.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
That was actually interesting and useful. Well, for me, anyway. not sure it
would make a good general interest article, but I found it helpful.

Thank you.

