Ask HN: Looking for a way to organise life/time I'm lost, loosing a lot of time, procrastinating, avoiding to take important decisions,... I'm looking for a simple framework to be better at tracking and improving life and time managing. Thanks in advance |
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done>
<https://gettingthingsdone.com/>
Start with the book.
The concept is something of a perennial favourite with HN: <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%22getting+things+done%22>
A mentor, coach, therapist, or partner can help as well.
You might want to check for underlying issues such as ADHD, though ultimately you've still simply got to establish goals, make a plan, and execute on it.
https://courses.rickhanson.net/courses/the-positive-neuropla...
Start there. Your life will follow from there.
It may seem trivial or "easy", but it's not. It's difficult because there's layers and layers of emotional and historical and monetary values all interacting.
With that you have a clearly defined baseline of things that will make you feel like you are making progress everyday. Making the decisions and finding the motivation to take action might be hard but at least you can start with the things that you are absolutely sure of and are small enough that you can do easily.
To that end I recently started using Tick-Tick as my TODO app, and reconfigured it to match how I impliment my GTD system.
It's been great; I have it split at the top between work / home and I'm making great progress on both fronts, and rarely losing track of stuff now.
This is a good video that covers both Tick-Tick and GTD; I used this as a rough guide to setup my Tick-Tick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTjYWvumZ5M
I read this as Tik Tok. I’m ashamed to admit I spent a good moment trying to figure how someone could use Tik Tok for GTD :)
https://stevenpressfield.com/books/the-war-of-art/
It's mainly aimed at creative people but can be applied more widely.
In Oliver’s world everyone is suffering because they’re avoiding thinking about the things that are important, and need to deeply examine their values. That’s true, I suppose. But some people are also struggling because they can’t keep their life straight enough to go to the dentist (got a root canal coming up, after I finally went back) or pay their bills on time, and working for a living at well paid job they’re good at is torture because they simply don’t know how to operate in a regimented corporate environment with agile boards and stand ups and reporting progress every day.
It’s a frustrating read because it is written as if everything Oliver says is natural and relatable, when often it isn’t. Of course we look down on those who have hobbies (what weird ass British nonsense is this?) of course we receive constant emails from random members of the public (nope, not really a problem for me.) It often didn’t read to me that Oliver believes these things effect the “real world.” They can. People really struggle.
After all that, I actually would say sure, OP should get the book. An enjoyable mix of pop-psychology, pop-philosophy, and a few actual productivity tips. But it’s bad advice to OP without caveats. People should know what they’re buying.
The advantages of bullet-journaling ("BuJo") are that it is flexible and adapts your personal needs. This is unlike most fixed-form journals.
I'd STRONGLY caution new-adopters to put an emphasis on utility over aesthetics. If you search bullet journaling on the Web, or particularly at YouTube, you'll find many cases of people getting hugely artistically creative with their journals. If that's truly your jam, then ... well, OK, I guess. But as a productivity tool, the principle emphasis in my view should be on, well, productivity.
My journals are utilitarian and not especially artistic. I do put time and thought into their organisation, but I'm not creating art-pieces.
The heart of my journals are 1) the index pages, 2) the end-references (I'll put what would otherwise be spreads and frequently-referenced information there), and 3) the actual journal pages and internal spreads themselves.
My preferences are a simple ruled or dotted journal, which I fill with the sections noted above. I do go through and number each page as I begin a new journal. That's a bit of meditative practice and discipline which IMO pays off.
And, for someone who does struggle (and is struggling) with organisation, the most valuable property of a bullet journal is that it's there for you to resume using even after you've abandoned it for days, weeks, months, or even years. With a pre-printed dated journal, you'll lose vast sections of unfilled dates. With a pre-printed structured journal, you fight with the page layout when it fails to fit your needs.