I use Any.do (which I like the UX off a great deal) with Reminders for this, at first it felt like it was nagging the hell out of me since I was snoozing so much stuff but then a strange thing happened, I stopped snoozing stuff and started doing it so I could kill the task if it was a quick task.
On the UX side something like that has to be so effortless for me to use (ymmv on what effortless is) that it becomes a habit otherwise I just forget to enter stuff as it occurs to me.
What I'd really like is an unobtrusive bluetooth like headset with natural language processing (think miniaturized persistent Alexa) that didn't need to sync through my phone but could sync with it periodically.
"Hal, task: remind me to buy cat litter, tomorrow morning, 10am, remind me again at 1pm"
"Hal, remind me, Monday morning, 10am, task: check I answered email from FooClient"
Then at 10am Monday morning audibly "You have a task: check you answered email from FooClient" "I've done that"
"Hal: Snooze all notifications for 2 hours" (for when you don't want to be disturbed) and have it cue up anything in that period.
"Hal: while I was snoozing, you missed the following tasks" etc.
Most of the pain of using a phone for task management is that typing stuff in is still annoying, on the technology side we are pretty much in that direction already I've even considered buying an Echo and seeing how far I can get with it's API.
Todo list apps work great for remembering what to do, but don't solve GP's problem one bit.
if you don't follow the plan, you haven't planned correctly. a good plan has built-in mechanisms to make you follow it. OP's project tries to give you one potential mechanism for that.
Nope. Procrastination is a psychological problem, not a planning problem. You can create the most perfect plan, but if you don't have the mental discipline to ignore distractions, combined with mechanisms to manage those you can't ignore, your plan will be worthless.
Would be better in the form of browser extension or desktop app for better tracking time.
I do this all in a text file. It works great. I used to delete completed items, but I found it robbed me of a sense of accomplishment I kinda value. If I don't finish the list (which happens often), at least I know what I didn't do, and have a good idea why I decided I didn't feel like it.
Of course, now I have a folder with 12 mostly-completed lists, the last items on which I keep dodging. There are no perfect answers in the continuing battle with one's self. Honestly, this app looks pretty cool, and if I was younger and more optimistic, I'd probably give it a go. I just feel like I know myself well enough (or have accepted my many faults enough) at this point that I'm pretty sure it wouldn't get me to do much more than I already am.
> I used to delete completed items, but I found it robbed me
> of a sense of accomplishment I kinda value.
> There are no perfect answers in the continuing battle with one's self.
Only we, individually, can define what's meaningful to us, and even then, that process of understanding and evolving our desires, values, purpose etc is a constant, ongoing struggle (called life).
Most 'productivity' systems and plans become out of date as soon as we learn something new. Which is always the goal anyways.
Now I archive done tasks once a week during weekly review. It gives me the sense of "wow, just look at how much I've done over the past week" without bloating my todo lists.
That's why I put "Stick fork in eye" on my list. Everything else will get done first.
Three pieces of feedback:
1) I have to click "done" after editing anything and if I forget and click on something else it undoes my edit. I'd prefer edits to be saved automatically.
2) I think the defaults should be 6 hours or 8 hours available for each weekday.
3) It wasn't immediately clear to me how to proceed after planning. I edited the url to go back to the root and then saw the timing functionality. Maybe something that helps first time users find the "Today" button top-left.
My biggest initial recommendation is this:
"Give breaks" is broken as implemented. As somebody who uses pomodoro: a task is 4 hours or 8 pomodoro sessions; it's an estimate that includes my breaks. Don't make me do the math and don't make me have weird 2 number estimates for no reason.
e.g. If a plan is about 4 hours I need to enter 4 hours - 8 x 5 breaks or 3 hours and 20 minutes. Estimates of 3h20m seem really exact when it's really how you represent "about 4 hours" in your app.
If I start the plan and realize it's really going to be more like 6 hours I have to do that all over again and change two numbers again.
Other issues: 1) Same as the OC. e.g. changed all the times on the hours per day but didn't click any of the dones, 7 changes lost. UX principle: don't require confirmation on easy to correct changes. 2) No keyboard navigation. 3) I have to double or triple click all the time. e.g. change name of "untitled plan" is 3 clicks. Change number of hours in a plan 2 clicks
6 hours is a bit much default IMO, not everyone is a freelancer/workaholic.
No, most people work 8 hour days...
And I second the issue with clicking Done - I wanted to set up a work week, and clicked Monday's time slot, started typing (keystrokes didn't go anywhere), clicked the hour time entry, then could enter 8 hours. Repeated for each work day, then clicked Done for Friday, and saw that it lost all the other day entries, and I had to go back through the process of setting up times on M-Th...
Then decided I'd come look at this another time.
I think Getting Things Done has a good approach by dedicating time to figuring out what the Next Actions are for any given task / project. The idea is that it is way easier to start on a task if what's listed is a concrete action. For example, you might add an item to your Inbox like:
"Add better search for project X".
You might avoid a task like this indefinitely. With GTD, you take regular time out of your day (it's how I start every morning), and you take your Inbox items like above and figure out what the literal next step should be to achieve the goal. So the above item might become:
"Search google for adding search to a django project"
There is something about taking the mental task of figuring out what the Next Actions are, and putting it into its own process that removes a lot of the hurdles for me.
Agreed. And one solution is, as you say, writing down a concrete action. The task is suddenly something you can hold in your head, and easily completely mentally.
Procrastination, at least for me, happens whenever I can't see an end to the task, usually because I haven't properly defined the task. As soon as there is a well defined set of steps to take, it suddenly becomes much easier to not procrastinate.
Procrastination is my brain's way of telling me it's not happy with the plan I've made, and that the goals I've set need to be re-written to be more achievable (in particular, more SMART [1]).
That said, projects like this are great, and definitely help with enumerating and planning!
It has to come from within and if I bring myself to stop procrastinating then the tool doesn't matter.
Habit works. Use whatever you can make a habit.
I work in research, when I start a project I have no really good idea on how many hours I'll have to put into it in order to complete it.
Same goes for some of my personal projects. Let's say, I want to learn Data Analysis in Python... I can't really come up with a good idea about how much time that will take me.
What I actually feel the need (as a procrastinator, which is the target of this product) is to keep tabs that I'm working on something (productively) every day.
Pomodoro method helps me a bit with this, although just as a metric, not really as a day scheduling tool as it was intended.
I would actually like to hear some thoughts about people that also struggle with this and how do they manage to stay productive (productive on their personal point of view).
Those first few hours in the morning are typically when I'm at my most mentally able to come up with good solutions for whatever I'm doing and the rest of the day I find it relatively easy to follow the plan.
In terms of pomodoro I use the opposite method, I don't time myself when I'm working on individual tasks from the list, instead as soon as I finish one I give myself 10 mins before starting the next.
My mind absolutely refuses to change context too quickly, it's almost as if I have to go defocus my mind on reddit or HN/youtube for 10 mins before it'll suddenly snap back to the next task.
But I'm a lifelong chronic procrastinator, I sometimes think I'm the equivalent of a runner who's trying to run a marathon in 100 meter sprints...
I'm productive enough in my own terms :) I get things done and mostly meet deadlines.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12736194
I'm training hard for algorithm contests (mostly on CodeForces.com and acm.timus.ru). It requires very intense focus without any distractions. Also, it's very energy consuming (at least for me) and can be frustrating if you get stuck.
But I have a problem with procrastination. To solve that, I agreed with myself that I will work on my algorithm stuff only when I turn on timer for 15, 30, 60 or 120 minutes. But if timer is turned on, I must work without any distractions at all (in complete silence, non-stop).
The key idea is that it's much easier to convince myself not to be distracted for specific time frame.
If it's hard for me to start working non-stop for 120 minutes, I start with 15 minute timer, after that I usually warm up and can setup timer for 30, 60 or 120 minutes with less psychological resistance.
Another key idea is that in order to start working hard, it's easier to convince myself to work hard only for 15 minutes. Then after that, you become warmed up for longer work.
I also record all my time to a journal. So I know exactly how much time I spent on algorithms last day, week or month.
I like simplicity and keep my journal in plain text.
I also wrote very simple program (C + X11 Xlib) to display histogram.
Here is how it looks like:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qmd198jr17dlt1t/hours_resized.png?...
Displayed data collected since February 2016.
Vertical black/grey (color alternating to differentiate between days) segments is how much time I spend each day.
Vertical blue lines mark 7 days frame.
Horizontal red lines mark 1 hour time.
Eg, what i like about Pomodoro is that i am not planning anything more. I simply chug away at my (hopefully micro optimized) task list, and take breaks when the Pomodoro says so.
This looks nifty, but i have no clue how long most of my tasks are going to take. Limiting them to 25m or w/e seems like it would induce more stress and uncertainty.
I assume i have the product slightly wrong. Thoughts?
First Screen
- "How much time do you think you have on an average weekday," and all days of the week are displayed.
- No indication of what to do. Decide to hold my breath and start clicking.
- Animations prior to signing up show +/- controls to alter values. But I discover I have to type numbers into these fields.
- I click on the + to add a plan, and then click in the Untitled Plan field. Placeholder text remains, where I expected it to disappear on focus or keydown.
- In creating a new plan, I enter Time to Complete and Minimum Session values. I then click "give breaks" and those values are reset to default.
- Values reset to defaults when choosing a new color, as well.
- The color option should differ from previously selected colors. (Though it is nice that previously selected colors are indicated by a white dot in the palate.)
- I just realized you have to click the "done" button. Maybe the values could be stored on blur?
- It's not clear what follows creating plans. In fact, I was stopped in my tracks at this point and was about to give up until I started clicking in the day columns.
- I could swear I said I had 2hrs on each weekday in the first screen. Yet I only have 1hr allotted to each day in plan allocation mode.
- My plan minimum time does not seem to be honored when I click on the + button. Indeed, looking at the plan it has reverted to defaults. Maybe I didn't hit the "done" button when configuring this attribute? In fact, the time to complete also reverted. This is too much work for me right now.I think you may have picked the wrong title. I am sure people are going to be confused and wonder what this has to do with procrastination, and it it really is the best tool against that and how it compares with other tools etc.
I think if you changed the title to "explicitly manage constraints", or "trade-off calendar for your time", you might get more takers.
I might give this a shot.
I suggest following for at least taking one step away from procrastination.
https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_mas...
Recently I found http://pomotodo.com/. It combines todo lists with the pomodoro method and I have found it pretty great so far.
I learned that to make things work, you need to schedule them, put them on calendar. However hard this is for me, I do that. Most of the time, I have to spill over a lot of things I would think I can do in a day over 3 day period. Majority of the time, even 3 days are not enough. So it keeps me honest. At every second, I know exactly what I need to do, and what I am avoiding to do.
It took me a while to get into that system. I suspect others have their own and it would be hard for them to get into this new one.
Having said that, I wish you best and will keep an eye.
So I see the value in this product, the challenge is being in a silo without necessarily having the resources to be as flexible and available cross-platform as Trello.
Is there an opt-in mailing list I can sign into to get updates on it? This isn't usable for me right now but I can see it being sufficiently useable in the future.
I really don't like some of the UI so I crafted my own Stylish css script to override yours, makes it look a bit more professional, currently it looks like it's for middle-schoolers. Sorry.
The following CSS code basically does this: Less kindergarten-buttons, more minimal out-of-the-way UI, smaller headers, more space for content, full width support now stretches and adjusts to browser width, removes rounded borders for non-clickable objects.
.Allocator__allocator___s0wBY .Allocator__heading___2pO2F .Allocator__pills___2v0H1 {border-radius:4px;} .PlanBar__planBar___2ET1U {border-radius:0px;} .PlanList__addButton___aSwx0 {border-radius:4px;} .PlanBar__planBarSegment___2fD3q {padding-top:0px;} .DayBar__bar___13rc2 {border-radius:0px;} .MonthDay__addSubtract___2js9l{border-radius:4px;} .Allocator__allocator___s0wBY .Allocator__heading___2pO2F .Allocator__pills___2v0H1 .Allocator__selected___3cu8c {background-color:yellowgreen} .PlanList__addButton___aSwx0 {background-color:lightblue;} .PlanList__planList___3U3vn .PlanList__bottom___1zgQS {height:auto;} .PlanList__planList___3U3vn .PlanList__bottom___1zgQS {height:auto;} .PlanList__addButton___aSwx0 {border-radius:0px;} .PlanList__addButton___aSwx0 {padding:0; margin:0;} .PlanEdit__button___2AMRT {border-radius:4px;} .Allocator__allocator___s0wBY .Allocator__calendarContainer___3r2TT .Allocator__weekLabels___2OG5E .Allocator__weekdayLabel___uiapn {width:14.3%;} .WeekDay__weekDay___90P4W {width:14.3%;} .Allocator__weekdayLabel___uiapn {width:14.3%;} .MonthDay__monthDay___156P4 {width:14.3%} .Nav__nav___XdSZA {padding:0; padding-left:0;} .Nav__nav___XdSZA .Nav__navItem___1iyJS {display:none;} .Allocator__allocator___s0wBY .Allocator__heading___2pO2F {padding: 2px 5px;} .Allocator__allocator___s0wBY .Allocator__calendarContainer___3r2TT .Allocator__weekLabels___2OG5E {width:100%;} .Allocator__allocator___s0wBY .Allocator__calendarContainer___3r2TT .Allocator__calendar___-60yN {width:100%;} .PlanList__planList___3U3vn .PlanList__header___S1Rpc {padding:3px 9px;} .PlanList__planList___3U3vn ul {padding-top:43px;} .PlanList__planItem___3d2Bx {padding-bottom:0; padding: 5px 10px 9px;} .PlanList__planList___3U3vn .PlanList__header___S1Rpc {height:auto;} .Allocator__allocator___s0wBY .Allocator__calendarContainer___3r2TT .Allocator__weekLabels___2OG5E { height: 35px;} .Allocator__weekdayLabel___uiapn {height: 36px; line-height: 36px;} .MonthDay__monthDay___156P4 {height:17.6%;}
Elements that cannot be clicked should not have rounded corners. Buttons on the other hand should have slightly rounded corners.
Firefox support could be better: color picker does not respond, time entry widget is annoying.
It would be nice to have a feedback/contact button or info about liquidtime app, an e-mail address, anything.
Out of curiosity, how did you build it?
I tried GTD (https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produ...) for 7 years before declaring it a failure. It does have some good ideas that I still use, but the TODO management didn't work for me. I think it'll work only for people who have fewer goals than I do. It doesn't handle large lists very well.
Some things I kept from it:
1. Filing cabinet - Instantly useful from day 1.
2. Calendars are only for hard deadlines. Don't put stuff in there that you merely want to do. I know this is the opposite of the submission here. For me, planning everything in the calendar, including things I could ignore, led to a mess. Keep it for things you really cannot ignore.
In general, any obsessive time based planning like this submission fails for me. GTD is not time based. I prefer planning my tasks for the week, not for the hour.
I like the idea behind Kanban, but I do not think it fits most of our personal lives. Very good for certain work environments, though.
Pomodoro technique: It's good, but not really for task management. It's just a good technique to stay focused. Worked for a few months until I got used to it. Now it does not keep me focused and I can easily get distracted by the web, etc.
These days I'm trying this:
https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Workday-Now-Strategies/dp...
I think it works better than GTD, and fills the gaps in it. If you do not want to buy the book, a condensed, down to Earth version is available as the 1 Minute Todo List:
http://www.michaellinenberger.com/TheOneMinuteTo-DoList-Eboo...
Personally, I feel the book is better than the PDF at explaining the rationale behind the 1 minute todo list. Reading it was very calming. It explained all the problems I had had with GTD and similar techniques.
Basic ideas:
1. If you cannot examine your todo list inside of a minute, it is too long. So spend a lot of effort ensuring your daily todo list is not long.
2. Urgency and importance are not the same. We're hard wired for focusing on urgency, so do not try to make a TODO list purely based on importance.
3. Every week, identify everything that must be done in the next 10 days and put it on your list that you'll examine daily. Things you decide not to do in the next 10 days, keep in your "list to examine weekly".
4. Every day, multiple times of the day, look at the short list and do tasks from among them. If new tasks come in, add them, but keep the list short (no more than 20-25 items). If your list is getting too long, identify things to move to the "list to examine weekly" and get them out of the way.
5. If something needs to be done today, put it on the top of your list!
6. You'll also have "the list to examine monthly" as well as quarterly.
Very simple idea - works a bit better than GTD.
I think my biggest problem is that I need to reduce the goals in my life and focus on only a few. I have more goals than time in my life, and I keep jumping from one to the other. No task management system will work until I do this. Tough decisions need to be made!