Before moving on to Things: My current process for todos, reminders and events.
In light of the all-new Things release, I thought I’d share my current process for todos, reminders and events; as a way to figure out if Things is for me.
Disclaimer: What follows is an unedited stream of my thoughts on todos.
But first, when and why have todo apps worked, or not, for me in the past?
When thinking about when I’ve successfully used todo apps in the past, the common nominator seem to be that I’ve had a lot of things to keep in mind. However, that’s not the norm for me. I’ve trained myself to become better at saying no and holding on to focus with clear objectives to calibrate against.
Today, except for events and short-lived todo lists (<1 hour), I’m analog. Index cards, post-its and a lined N°18 Staplebound Pad is always close by.
All events, especially with other people, end up in my calendar app. I use short-lived todo lists, on paper or in digital format depending on the task. The A4 Pad is used for input, and if something is to far away to do now or has a specific time, it ends up in either my calendar app or reminders app.
Everything else follows me around by paper, index cards or post-its.
For years now, I’ve had two important policies in my in my life: 1) write down everything, and 2) make lists of everything. These two policies has served me well in becoming organised and remembering things. Physical writing tend to help me to better recall and understand what I’m writing. Making lists removes stress and help me organise my thoughts and todos.
A mistake I’ve done in the past is to look at my todos as must-dos, or at least should-dos. Nowadays I have a much healthier might-do view of my todos. This is thanks to John Zeratsky’s excellent post “I Gave Up on To-Do Lists — Here’s How I Use a Might-Do List and a Calendar to Plan My Days Instead”.
Since I’ve had this unhealthy view of todos before, I also had the tendency to stockpile on todos, and since “digital” has no shortage of space this lead to me feeling unorganised and burdened by what was in the app. Resulting in deleting the app. For a while I tried Bullet Journaling which taught me the habit of choosing which todos to migrate forward into the next day.
John Zeratsky has also written a post called “Fancy Tools Are a Distraction” which resonates heavily with me. In my personal life I really haven’t found much need for digital tools. Post-its and index cards on the refrigerator and walls is plenty enough most of the time. At work, as Head of Product, I try and maintain a war room and work hard to avoid backlogs and not let ideas lay around and steal energy. Basecamp wrote about Forgetting Feature Requests in their book Getting Real, which is a good reminder for this.
So what has changed? What’s described by John has served me well for a long time now, so why am I even considering Things? Well, work-life has changed for me in the last few years. I’ve gone from being a developer, to more of a product person in general, and more recently to Head of Product—where I am now. Considering this, the type of work I do has changed. Focus-periods are shorter than before, I’m involved in more initiatives during any given moment and there’s a lot more interpersonal work than before.
It’s the last one really that I believe has me writing this. When working mostly in teams and in project-like environments it’s fairly easy to set up communication hubs where you can visualise and communicate about work. But when there’s also a lot of 1–1 communication and responsibilities shared between two people, those communication hubs may not be the best place for the information surrounding this interpersonal work—it’s also quite possible not something I want to put visibly on paper (none of my current solutions involve closed books, and my stuff typically lay open for everyone).
Today, I’ve yet to find a great solution for this. I could look at CRM systems, or maybe Jason Evanish’s Lighthouse software, but if anything I feel I should start small and I’d prefer to find a solution which let me create a focused list from other organised lists of todos and reminders. This is where the all-new Things comes in. I’ve quite enjoyed Things 2 from time to time, but haven’t been able to organise myself as I’d preferred. With features like Headings, Upcoming, Today and This Evening, and an all-in-all glorious UI I think I might just have to give a try again, while also maintaining what I’ve learnt without digital tools (e.g. to not stock up on todo items just because I can).
