<story><title>Todo apps are meant for robots</title><url>https://blog.frantic.im/all/todo-apps-are-meant-for-robots/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bschne</author><text>My single biggest improvement in getting somewhat organized and productive so far has probably come from getting comfortable with some amount of chaos.&lt;p&gt;I used to try and set up the perfect system for my notes. I got caught in endless cycles of coming up with some structure, finding new tools, etc. — only to then barely ever write down anything because it never quite fit into any of the boxes I&amp;#x27;d prepared.&lt;p&gt;I used to try out a new todo app every other month, enthusiastic that this time I&amp;#x27;d find the system that would finally enable me to never let anything fall through the cracks.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d plan out the perfect pipeline of bookmark - triage - read&amp;#x2F;watch&amp;#x2F;listen so that I could stay on top of every great talk, article, interview or book anyone had ever created and shared with the world. You can probably guess what happened.&lt;p&gt;Then, for some reason, I just got more... relaxed? at some point. Have a thought? Just make a note, doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if I&amp;#x27;ll ever look at it again or it will still make sense in a week. Sometimes I go back and expand on things. Sometimes I event write something out of it. Most times I don&amp;#x27;t and that&amp;#x27;s fine. Find something cool? Just bookmark. Maybe I&amp;#x27;ll look through them in a moment of boredom one day soon, maybe the never-ending influx of hot new content means I&amp;#x27;ll never get around to it. Whatever. Want to or think I should do something? Make a task, don&amp;#x27;t set a date, maybe I&amp;#x27;ll get back to it, maybe it turns out I don&amp;#x27;t want or need to do it ever. Got something you keep putting off? Maybe just delete it after the tenth time, it&amp;#x27;ll come back to you if it&amp;#x27;s worth it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>midrus</author><text>I followed a similar path.&lt;p&gt;Nowadays I just use the Notes app from my mac. I keep a primary note named &amp;quot;daily&amp;quot; where I write at the top the date and everything interesting for the day. If there is anything  important enough I want to keep it for more days I move it to a separate note. If I realize I need something I did 3 weeks ago it is easy to find too. It syncs with my phone, works offline, and imposes as little structure as possible which is something I like for the reasons you explained.</text></comment>
<story><title>Todo apps are meant for robots</title><url>https://blog.frantic.im/all/todo-apps-are-meant-for-robots/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bschne</author><text>My single biggest improvement in getting somewhat organized and productive so far has probably come from getting comfortable with some amount of chaos.&lt;p&gt;I used to try and set up the perfect system for my notes. I got caught in endless cycles of coming up with some structure, finding new tools, etc. — only to then barely ever write down anything because it never quite fit into any of the boxes I&amp;#x27;d prepared.&lt;p&gt;I used to try out a new todo app every other month, enthusiastic that this time I&amp;#x27;d find the system that would finally enable me to never let anything fall through the cracks.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d plan out the perfect pipeline of bookmark - triage - read&amp;#x2F;watch&amp;#x2F;listen so that I could stay on top of every great talk, article, interview or book anyone had ever created and shared with the world. You can probably guess what happened.&lt;p&gt;Then, for some reason, I just got more... relaxed? at some point. Have a thought? Just make a note, doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if I&amp;#x27;ll ever look at it again or it will still make sense in a week. Sometimes I go back and expand on things. Sometimes I event write something out of it. Most times I don&amp;#x27;t and that&amp;#x27;s fine. Find something cool? Just bookmark. Maybe I&amp;#x27;ll look through them in a moment of boredom one day soon, maybe the never-ending influx of hot new content means I&amp;#x27;ll never get around to it. Whatever. Want to or think I should do something? Make a task, don&amp;#x27;t set a date, maybe I&amp;#x27;ll get back to it, maybe it turns out I don&amp;#x27;t want or need to do it ever. Got something you keep putting off? Maybe just delete it after the tenth time, it&amp;#x27;ll come back to you if it&amp;#x27;s worth it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>iamtedd</author><text>Your comment reminded me about a passage from Red Dwarf:&lt;p&gt;In fact, it was now possible for Rimmer to revise solidly for three months and not learn anything at all.&lt;p&gt;The first week of study, he would always devote to the construction of a revision timetable. At school Rimmer was always at his happiest colouring in geography maps: under his loving hand, the ice-fields of Europa would be shaded a delicate blue, the subterranean silica deposits of Ganymede would be rendered, centimetre by painstaking centimetre, a bright and powerful yellow, and the regions of frozen methane on Pluto slowly became a luscious, inviting green. Up until the age of thirteen, he was constantly head of the class in geography. After this point, it became necessary to know and understand the subject, and Rimmer&amp;#x27;s marks plunged to the murky depths of &amp;#x27;F&amp;#x27; for fail.&lt;p&gt;He brought his love of cartography to the making of revision timetables. Weeks of patient effort would be spent planning, designing and creating a revision timetable which, when finished, were minor works of art.&lt;p&gt;Every hour of every day was subdivided into different study periods, each labelled in his lovely, tiny copperplate hand; then painted over in watercolours, a different colour for each subject, the colours gradually becoming bolder and more urgent shades as the exam time approached. The effect was as if a myriad tiny rainbows had splintered and sprinkled across the poster-sized sheet of creamwove card.&lt;p&gt;The only problem was this: because the timetables often took seven or eight weeks, and sometimes more, to complete, by the time Rimmer had finished them the exam was almost on him. He&amp;#x27;d then have to cram three months of astronavigation revision into a single week. Gripped by an almost deranging panic, he&amp;#x27;d then decide to sacrifice the first two days of that final week to the making of another timetable. This time for someone who had to pack three months of revision into five days.&lt;p&gt;Because five days now had to accommodate three months&amp;#x27; work, the first thing that had to go was sleep. To prepare for an unrelenting twenty-four hours a day sleep-free schedule, Rimmer would spend the whole of the first remaining day in bed – to be extra, ultra fresh, so he would be able to squeeze three whole months of revision into four short days.&lt;p&gt;Within an hour of getting up the next morning, he would feel inexplicably exhausted, and start early on his supply of Go-Double-Plus caffeine tablets. By lunchtime he&amp;#x27;d overdose, and have to make the journey down to the ship&amp;#x27;s medical unit for a sedative to help him calm down. The sedative usually sent him off to sleep, and he&amp;#x27;d wake up the following morning with only three days left, and an anxiety that was so crippling he could scarcely move. A month of revision to be crammed into each day.&lt;p&gt;At this point he would start smoking. A lifelong non-smoker, he&amp;#x27;d become a forty-a-day man. He&amp;#x27;d spend the whole day pacing up and down his room, smoking three or four cigarettes at a time, stopping occasionally to stare at the titles in his bookcase, not knowing which one to read first, and popping twice the recommended dosage of dog-worming tablets, which he erroneously believed to contain amphetamine.&lt;p&gt;Realizing he was getting nowhere, he&amp;#x27;d try to get rid of his soul-bending tension by treating himself to an evening in one of &lt;i&gt;Red Dwarf&lt;/i&gt;&amp;#x27;s quieter bars. There he would sit, in the plastic oak-beamed &amp;#x27;Happy Astro&amp;#x27; pub, nursing a small beer, grimly trying to be light-hearted and totally relaxed. Two small beers and three hours of stomach-knotting relaxation later, he would go back to his bunk and spend half the night awake, praying to a God he didn&amp;#x27;t believe in for a miracle that couldn&amp;#x27;t happen.&lt;p&gt;Two days to go, and ravaged by the combination of anxiety, nicotine, caffeine tablets, alcohol he wasn&amp;#x27;t used to, dog-worming pills, and overall exhaustion, he would sleep in till mid-afternoon.&lt;p&gt;After a long scream, he would rationalize that the day was a total write-off, and the rest of the afternoon would be spent shopping for the three best alarm clocks money could buy. This would often take five or six hours, and he would arrive back at his sleeping quarters exhausted, but knowing he was fully prepared for the final day&amp;#x27;s revision before his exam.&lt;p&gt;Waking at four-thirty in the morning, after exercising, showering and breakfasting, he would sit down to prepare a final, final revision table, which would condense three months of revision into twelve short hours. This done, he would give up and go back to bed. Maybe he didn&amp;#x27;t know a single thing about astronavigation, but at least he&amp;#x27;d be fresh for the exam the next day.&lt;p&gt;Which is why Rimmer failed exams.&lt;p&gt;--Grant Naylor, &lt;i&gt;Red Dwarf&lt;/i&gt;, 1989</text></comment>