

Do It Now - joao
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/doitnow

======
andrewljohnson
Aaron, you sound like a guy with not enough to do. If you can answer every
email without prioritization, then I doubt you are getting all that much
email.

I suppose I could go through every email, Seth Godin-style, and fire off a
zinger one-liner the day it arrives. But though I might answer a lot of email,
I wouldn't be doing the emailers any favors.

I often get emails from users that require some thought or research to answer
properly. These people are better served to wait a couple days, than to have
me try and be "productive." I agree with the general idea of "Just Do It." But
it's just an aphorism, and any aphorism taken to extreme will end up being
moronic.

What are you working on these days anyways? I'd prefer to see your software
than your thoughts on answering emails or hiring programmers. Reddit and RSS
are certainly helping me more than your essays brewed from boredom.

~~~
jimbokun
"I suppose I could go through every email, Seth Godin-style, and fire off a
zinger one-liner the day it arrives. But though I might answer a lot of email,
I wouldn't be doing the emailers any favors."

I remember reading not too long ago a heart felt email from a developer to
Steve jobs that was several paragraphs long. Jobs' full reply:

"Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal."

[http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/dear-
steve-...](http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/dear-steve--
20091125-jppa.html)

From the time stamps, he replied within 3 hours, and probably within a few
minutes of when he actually read it.

Maybe he could have taken more time to research and reply, ask a subordinate
to research further, etc. But I doubt he could have given a much better
response or made his position more clear than those 10 words.

I guess my point is, the "zinger one-liner" might be the most appropriate
course of action more often than you think.

~~~
run4yourlives
He could have said "Fuck You" as well - which is basically what he did - but
most people don't consider that positive communication.

I don't think the response he gave was the one that would have the most
positive effects.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
I read this hoping it would be another really cool use of "dot" to make things
easier to visualise, and hence easier to prioritize, and hence easier to do,
thus making it useful, and a cool pun.

But it's just a mis-spelling.

Things I use "dot" for include:

\- Diagramming links between Paul Graham essays. When I told him about it he
suggested I submit it here to HN. That's how I first arrived:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=397408>

\- My site map. It's a real map, not just a list of pages

\- Scheduling. Dependent tasks point to each other, and are set to the same
level as the week they're due.

\- Visualizing data structures. I've invented a new one and want to see how it
evolves through time.

\- System connectivity diagrams and data flow.

There are more, but that's enough. Dot and neato are incredibly useful tools.

More useful than yet another "Do It Now" page.

~~~
eru
Just for making it easier to search for on the web: The package that includes
dot is called graphviz. (An excellent piece of software.)

------
boundlessdreamz
"We procrastinate because we are afraid." This struck a chord.

~~~
cschneid
This is probably my own biggest trigger for procrastination. I avoid writing
an email or calling somebody due to fear, or uneasiness. Then over time, I
avoid it further due to fear of lateness. Luckily recognizing this is half the
way to solving it. The other half is the temporary spike in willpower to
overcome the fear.

------
dkarl
What's new or interesting here? Obviously if he was able to read and handle
every every single piece of mail, it didn't matter what system he used, as
long as he changed something up to renew his optimism and enthusiasm.

See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect>

~~~
randallsquared
But he didn't renew his optimism or enthusiasm, unless I'm missing something.
Rather, he just did the first one anyway, even though he wasn't enthused about
it.

This is a lesson I have to learn over and over, because I want to do things
I'm excited about doing. There's a lot of things, though, that I want to _have
done_ , and for things like that, there's typically no way to make them more
exciting or to make me more optimistic about handling them -- I just have to
start. Once I've started, continuing is far easier, for whatever reason.

When I programmed mostly for myself (that is, with no set schedule other than
a dimly seen deadline), I had quite a lot of trouble getting started, and so I
developed a trick to help with that: at the end of the day, I'd make sure to
leave some small, quickly-accomplished thing undone, to have something to do
when I started again. Sometimes I'd also write a note on how to do it, if it
seemed like I might forget. Over months, though, this turned into a problem
itself, since I would spend lots of time during the day coming up with tasks
that I could do the next day to start, and then I would use that as an excuse
not to do them today, because, hey, what if I wasn't able to come up with
anything else to start on easily tomorrow? I might lose the whole next day!

Eventually, this got to the point where I'd spend weeks doing only one or two
small tasks in the morning, and then being afraid to start on anything bigger
lest I not have something easy to start on the next day. Of course, this
defeated the purpose...

Actually accomplishing things, whether coding, or writing, or cleaning up
email, or just cleaning the house, is something that you have to just do. You
might be able to trick yourself into doing a little more of it, but if you
focus on the trick, you aren't likely to build the habit of just doing things,
which means that you'll easily stop doing them when something happens to make
the trick less effective.

People for whom the trick(s) really seem to work have moved into a
psychological realm where they have the habit of getting things done; the
trick is no longer really the point, I'd guess.

------
neilk
Is anyone else puzzled about all this "inbox zero" stuff? My email is very
manageable. And I may not be Aaron Swartz, but I'm not a complete loser
either.

It's possible I am different, because I assume that any tweet, email, or blog
post not directly ONLY at me, or my local work group, is usually ignorable
without consequence. I also don't make commitments when I know my interest is
only marginal. I may also be more immune to social pressure -- if someone adds
me on Twitter or starts commenting on my blog, I feel no obligation to add
them back.

Is this rude? Am I a recluse and don't know it? I don't understand how others
get anything done without severely throttling the messages they receive.

------
vijaydev
Isn't it "Do It Now" ?

~~~
jimbokun
Or "Just Do It"?

