(First post, let me know of any cultural “faux pas”)
As many others I struggle with managing my day to day/week/month/year/decade, so naturally I’m looking for some kind of TODO-software.
I’m trying to find an open[1] format for todo-items and -lists that has the capability to give recurring todo:s the attribute of “droppable” so that an individual occurrence can be “dropped”.
It would also be fantastic if the format has an inbuilt way to keep track of what individual occurrences have been “done” or “dropped”
This would allow me to keep track of things like:
- Medicines: recurring (sometimes many times a day) with a fairly small window if opportunity, if I don’t take them it should be noted but there is no way to do it later so it should be “dropped” from the main-list.
- Bills: recurring with a few days of being actionable (depending on when I get paid and the bills due date), if I don’t pay them it should be made higher priority until I pay them, this should also be kept track of.
- Cleaning windows: recurring, with a big window of opportunity, but if this particular spring is a bad one it doesn’t matter, this should be dropped and there is no need to keep track of it.
- Things that are considered “habits” (like personal hygiene, exercise, cleaning, practicing musical instruments, etc). These should be dropped and tracked.
The goal is to be able to produce a fairly short list of things that I can[2] do right now and absolutely bury things I can’t or shouldn’t do.
If there isn’t any decent format I will most likely just force one of the two mentioned with some kind of appropriate extension.
/Kruffa
[1] open in this context would be some kind of standard like VTODO or just openly available like todo.txt
[2] can as in MUST / SHOULD / MAY
I’ve tried a range of apps for recurring TODOs. Just use calendar events and fucking do it now was my conclusion.
Yeah, it’s that last bit that no amount of apps will do for you. Digging around for exactly the right software is the perfect procrastination against not fucking doing the things already.
Edit: That’s not a slight on OP, btw. I’ve done the same thing so many times, and I’ll probably do it again.
I’ve done physical lists as well as digital ones. I tried different “productivity” systems with each their cult following.
Just use your calendar app to set up events (sync it with your email app/platform if you can), set timers for recurring reminders like medicine you need to take at the same time every day…
Oh, I know, procrastination is my drug of choice…
Fortunately I have a job that requires presence and readiness to act but very little actual work so I can indulge in this kind of thinking and these projects here :)
Yes.
Microsoft To-Do has most of the features requested here (but is not open really) and I’ve tried to use it extensively but for anything that’s not one-off it doesn’t really work because the problem isn’t generally remembering that you need to clean, pay bills etc it’s actually doing it.
To-Do software only really works for the things you forget, like buy ingredients to make a birthday cake or setup that ladder service in your selfhosted setup to go around pay walls in a more automated fashion.
For app supported habit forming there are some gamification apps that some friends swear by but they’ve never really done it for me. For me the only thing that works is cultivating discipline by… Just fucking doing it, no matter what I feel.
These kind of apps come close to a subset of my needs, but their focus on tracking every thing and the long lists of everything just work against me.
As I wrote in another comment, the problem isn’t keeping track when things go well, the problem is getting to a state where things go well.
While I’m not primarily looking for a discussion about strategy I do understand it’s inevitable, so…
While this seems like a great strategy for you, it isn’t for me, I’ve tried this and many other strategies and failed at all.
I’m looking for this specific capabilty in the format because what I need is a low-stakes way to get back on the horse. And from my research and knowledge about myself this requirement (“forget if not done”) is the best I can work with. If you have ideas or systems that deal with this I’m open to discuss them
I don’t really need help when things are going well, but I will fail and I will drop all the balls and almost everything else for a few months for reasons, some days I will forget if I took my 08:00 medication or if I have eaten. Some weeks I wont be able to call my mother to check on her or my friends to make plans.
I need a place to see 3-5 meaningful things I can do right now, because if there are too many I get overwhelmed. If there is a long list of things I haven’t done I get too discouraged or if I have to start by figuring out what to do I get stuck on finding the best thing.
So, while I’m glad you can manage to just fucking do it, I can’t.
I understand. I’ve been like you every now and then.
AFAIK after Getting Things Done appeared in the beginning of the email era, nobody found a definitive alternative for 20 years. And the GTD way of doing time constraints is “put it in the calendar”.
While each person has their own way of doing things, I’d be surprised if there were a revolutionary alternative to this.