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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
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<title>Noon van der Silk - ☐ He died with a todo list in his hand ...</title>
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<h1><a href="../">Noon van der Silk</a></h1>
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<h2>☐ He died with a todo list in his hand ...</h2>
<div class="info">
Posted on June 3, 2021
by Noon van der Silk
</div>
<center>
<img width="600" src="../images/todo-list.png" />
<br />
<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0172543/">A classic Australian
movie</a>:
A nightmare chase through hell in a never-ending, unrequited daisy chain of
desire… .
</center>
<p>What is time? How do we measure a life? How many things did you get done
today? What are you working on tomorrow!? Can you come hang out on Sunday!!?</p>
<hr />
<p>Recently, and also always, I’ve been thinking about how to manage a list of
todos. During an internal knowledge-sharing session <a href="https://www.tweag.io/">at
work</a> I was prompted to reflect on all the different
schemes I’ve tried:</p>
<ul>
<li>Random pieces of paper</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Notepad">Notepad</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZj0WLxj-T0">Windows sticky notes</a></li>
<li><a href="https://tiddlywiki.com/">Tiddlywiki</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki">Mediawiki</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jira_(software)">Jira</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.phpbb.com/">phpBB</a> and other misc BBS software</li>
<li><a href="https://www.vim.org/">Vim</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/romainl/vim-qf">Vim quickfix window</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/silky/utils/tree/master/find-todo">A terrible custom python script</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki">Vimwiki</a></li>
<li>Text files</li>
<li><a href="https://orgmode.org/">Org-Mode</a> (I gave up almost immediately)</li>
<li>Emails to myself</li>
<li>A private mailing list I made up</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique">Pomodoro</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/silky/ideas/issues">Github issues</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trello">Trello</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.notion.so/">Notion</a></li>
<li><a href="https://asana.com/">Asana</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/README">Readme files</a></li>
<li><a href="https://taskwarrior.org/">Taskwarrior</a></li>
<li><a href="https://bulletjournal.com/pages/learn">Bullet journal</a> (for <4 minutes)</li>
<li>Physical notebooks</li>
<li>Fancy notebooks</li>
<li>Cheap notebooks</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board">Physical ‘kanban’ cards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/silky/ideas#complete">A whiteboard</a></li>
<li>My head</li>
<li>Nothing</li>
<li>Random pieces of paper</li>
</ul>
<p>Right now I’m back to a whiteboard (by luck I happen to have one behind me
where I work), and ‘todo’ notes in code + github issues.</p>
<hr />
<p>My friend Ruth told me something that perhaps is very obvious but was also
surprisingly calming to me: You’ll die with items on your todo list. So don’t
worry about it!</p>
<p>I think there’s a few ways to think about this:</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>The optimisic view: Amazing that I am lucky enough to have things I intend
to do and look forward to!</li>
<li>The pessimistic view: Sad that I had goals that I was never able to
achieve!</li>
<li>The Buddhist view: Your big mistake is having desires at all!</li>
</ol>
<p>I want to live around option (3) and (1) at the moment, but of course option
(2) is a very very strong driving force; and often necessary (for example, at
work!); the only time I was brave enough to enact option (3) at a work
setting was when <a href="https://braneshop.com.au/posts/Braneshop-A-Living-Business-Part-1.html">I ran my own
business</a>!</p>
<p>Another interesting thing that came up as part of the work discussion was that
in some ways what you want to do depends on your mood. No doubt! So … maybe
mood can be a parameter?!</p>
<hr />
<p>I think, secretly, for the rest of my life, I will believe that there is a True
answer out there; an ultimate organisation scheme; the Four-Fold path to Life
Efficiency: Right Editing, Right Organisation, Right Workflow and Right
History.</p>
<p>But I also think that I should never think about this again. But on the other
hand, I was inspired at the talk today; so I might give task-warrior another
go.</p>
<p>But, you didn’t come here for that! Maybe you came here for advice? So, here
it is (it’s not even my advice! Gala claims it’s her idea which is probably
true):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you can, don’t even write the thing down; just do it immediately, or,
alternatively, convince yourself you don’t need to think about it now.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Maybe it’s part of my personality, but this works <em>surprisingly</em> well for me.
Especially if it’s something that I’m working on with someone else; instead of
delaying my part, I can just try and make as much progress as I can
immediately, and send it back to the other person! Another way of saying this:
I can offset storing my todo list to you!</p>
<p>I find this idea to be quite operaitonal; I often find myself using this rule
to do something sooner rather than later.</p>
<p>Here’s one thing I know about myself: <a href="https://scirate.com/noonsilk">I can’t be trusted with
lists</a>. I get a
bit obsessed with organising them. So I’m trying to avoid them these days.</p>
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