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Comments (76)

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  myself248
  Initially I kept my ToDo in a text file and I'd just delete things when I did them. Nice clean list of what's remaining, but after a few weeks I felt AWFUL, the list grew faster than it shrank, and it felt like I never made headway.Now I don't delete things. I put a little + at the start of the line for anything I did, a - for anything I decided not to do, and a / for anything I did partially but needs to be revisited. I write a new list each day, carrying-forward items that I feel are worth revisiting.And what's huge is that I can scroll down and see previous lists, years worth, and read all the stuff I did. It's enormous compared to the remaining todos, and apparently that's psychologically important.
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  linsomniac
  I've been doing a work-oriented "what I did today" list for ~25 years, and really like it. Originally it started because I needed to bill for my time, but when I went to my current job (over a decade ago) I kept doing it. In my iteration, it is a concise sentence about each thing I've worked on that day. At the end of the month I go back through and review it and write up a "Wins" list.It's surprisingly useful; I share it with my coworkers and we often consult it if we notice something has been behaving differently starting at a certain date to see what was going on then.I keep it in a simple text file, running in a tmux on a server, so I have connections to it from my laptop and my desktop. It's currently 19,509 lines.
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  andai
  > Maybe the most obvious con: a tada list forces you to have an accomplishment each day so you can write it down, and this added stress to my day.Maybe it makes more sense to have a box per week instead of per day. Or even per month!At least in my own life I've noticed that focusing on daily output tends to be demoralizing, whereas if I look back over the months I am often amazed by what has come out of me.
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  fastasucan
  >Maybe the most obvious con: a tada list forces you to have an accomplishment each day so you can write it down, and this added stress to my day.The problem here is that they think it forces you to have an accomplishment. Just write what you did in short form. IT can be "Was very stressed and couldn't get anything substantial done, attended the monthly developer meeting and did some work on documentation".I do this as well to better remember what I have done at work, to quickly be able to document my value towards the company, and to have some "tabs" to show if there are any questions regarding what I did a day.
• commandersaki
  I have had many accomplishments, and I've forgotten them all. When it comes to interviewing, I've forgotten most things or can't do easy recall that I can't even speak to them. I have no desire to change though; as long as I made those accomplishments is all that matters, it's kind of like giving gifts - I don't bother remembering what I did for whom.
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  Tade0
  This is lovely, but in certain life circumstances I've found it more useful to have a to-dont-list, as in: list of things I would really like to do, but shouldn't because there are more pressing matters to attend to and I need to pace myself, otherwise things will turn ugly really quick.Example: day before Christmas eve - the last workday in this region I found myself standing in line to a car wash. There was just one guy ahead of me, but those who were already soaping up their vehicles didn't seem to be in a hurry and it was already 4pm, so sundown over here and I still had other errands run that day.I turned around and the car is currently still dirty, but it'll remain so until I can make time for that, so in 2026.
• Lalabadie
  For similar reasons, I ended up sticking to a bullet journal (ish) format after I tried it ~10 years ago. I don't do long-term planning with it, but I have 1-2 weeks laid out in advance, and years of stuff logged.It keeps a record of things done and lived. In terms of planning and task keeping, the paper format also forces me to let things fall off the list if they won't get done after all.I also joke that I'll be the person who can actually answer if one day an investigator asks me "What were you doing on the night of November 22nd, 2019?"
• gnarlouse
  What I want is:A todo list that feeds into a calendar (with a high degree of flexibility) that feeds into a tada list.I’ve been working on this casually for the better part of a year and hope to release something that is home-hostable later in 2026, once I’ve lived with it for a bit.Like I don’t want to remember that I need to do something, I just want a time slot in my calendar that auto populates against a set of constraints, so I can go from moment to moment in a flow. I want to be able to control that todo list and my goals’ time/space constraints with natural language—not some godforsaken form that gives you carpal tunnel. And then I want to see how my progress grows and how much I’m committing to what I want to do.
• dupdup
  Person that has the ability to have post here in HN is enough of productive at least from most of us reading here. But for us, most of the time staring at the screen reading HN is also nice to keep a list here is what I do: I have a notebook on my desk that has horizontal lines(what is the word for it) I guess one line is .75 cm wide using that as a day of week I noted what I do that day with codes HackerNews hn, game, read, first job(fj), second job(sj), youtube you, bodybuilding bb, fut for thinking about future life. I keep the list over detail to show you how much a mundane life i have. But be sure more items make you more happy for that day. SO I mean please keep a list of what you are doing taht day
• bawolff
  I like this idea.I often feel like im better at starting (or just planning) projects then seeing them through, so maybe doing this will force me to finish something.
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  andsoitis
  > tada listAh I thought (and hoped) it was gonna be a list of epiphanies, interesting learnings, new sweetness. You know… taDA!
• niek_pas
  I did not know about value studies but I have to say, those are gorgeous works of art in and of themselves!
• jeffrallen
  I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of excellent work that others do, things that surprised and delighted me, or difficult situations they handled with professionalism. Makes me smile just thinking of it. It will be useful during an upcoming review.
• tambourine_man
  “learned took a CSS course”Extra word there
• neonnoodle
  Lovely paintings!
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  rw_panic0_0
  that's a nice practice that I do from time to time. Like when my inner self critic starts being too critical ("I'm not doing enough" kind of stuff), or doing things gets harder for some reason, I incorporate the routine of writing done things at the end of the day, and when the situation normalizes I stop doing it. It's usually like a month or two
• victrflow
  Love this, I’ll definitely give it a try for a while. I did something similar a while back but on a monthly basis
• LightBug1
  I kind of use my calendar to do this ... if I'm frazzled at the end of the week, it helps to see what I actually did as frazzle brain will have forgotten
• petesergeant
  I managed to do this for most of the first half of the year, and it was very rewarding indeed. Somehow it sort of dropped off, and something was lost, so I think definitely something to pick up again this coming year.
• edwardtay
  [flagged]
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  amelius
  I am impressed that in this age of AI they still feel the drive to make watercolor paintings, to be honest.Sadly, at this point I would not even call it a challenge, but I would consider it more a pastime.