Abolish Your Task List
September 7th, 2007 (11:00am) Mike Gunderloy 9 CommentsTweet This
Web workers love task lists. Perhaps it’s our fascination with Getting Things Done, or our tendency to work without direct supervision that necessitates plotting the course of our own day. Whatever the reason, I’ve seldom run across a web worker who didn’t have some system for tracking what had to be done next, and next, and next. Sometimes, it seems, we fall so in love with these systems that tracking and organizing tasks becomes a goal in itself, rather than a means to actually get our real work done.
Twitter developer and blogger Alex Payne recently suggested a radical solution to this sort of task list fetishization – the anti-task list:
I don’t create a list of things to blog about, I create drafts; when I have time to write a blog post, I’ll open up my blog editor. Similarly, I no longer take the time to create a task to download something and assign that task a “web” or “home” context. Instead, I just download that something right now or queue it up in a download manager. Where possible, I create a Hazel rule to take care of filing things away in application-specific queues for me. If I have a frequent task that I don’t have a specific tool for, I find one and make sure that the tool supports some kind of queuing.
The anti-task list represents a different way to think about the GTD notion of task contexts. Rather than maintain a central list of tasks for all of your contexts, you let each context organically manage its own tasks. That way, when you switch contexts – to blogging, say, or file management – your tasks are already there waiting for you.
Anti-task lists are a good example of applying the DRY (don’t repeat yourself) principle outside of software development: the idea that any time you type the same code twice you’re wasting effort. Why enter the details of a task in your task list and then repeat those details again to carry out the task? Just enter them once and be done with it. If you’re a GTD practitioner, one sign that you have tasks that could benefit from this approach is a set of application-specific contexts; if you’re assigning your tasks to contexts such as @InDesign, @PhotoShop, or @VisualStudio, it could well be time to cut out the middleman.
Still, the anti-task list isn’t for everyone. If you’re managing tasks that are primarily performed off your computer, a traditional task list may be the perfect tool for you; as there’s no application involved in executing the task, you’re not duplicating data entry. And in my dream world, I’d have a master task list that could somehow extract and combine the information from application-specific queues, so that I could get an overview of my schedule and commitments while still entering things only once. Operating system developers, are you listening?
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It would be cool to see if you could extend Quicksilver to handle your master task list dream.
I have to admit, I’ve never really gotten the whole “GTD” thing. My tasks are very context-dependent, and for a long time I’ve been keeping my lists and queues by context so that when I switch, everything is right there. Alex’s strategy makes perfect sense to me.
Nice article Mike, striking the balance on when to have (or not to have) a task list. As you mention, task lists are helpful in determining schedule and prioritizing..
When the task doesn’t require scheduling and has become more of a habit (like reading/writing mails or blogs), we no longer need it on the list. These days before adding a task on the list, I stop to think if it really belongs there, what i am going to do with this item when I finally get to it..
Thanks for the post. Hmmm. This is still list-making, but with lots of workflow-specific lists and/or capture. The missed point, I believe, is that these all *still need to be checked*. Ex:
o Blog posts: Instead of writing “create post on __”, it’s create a new draft in the blog too’s draft list (possibly capturing some content). It’s used when it’s time to post – select one from the list of candidates (drafts), finish, and post.
o Download a file: Instead of “download __”, it’s download the file and move it to the downloaded files list. It’s used when it’s time to explore/test/evaluate a program – select one from the list of candidates (download folder), install, etc.
I do the same thing with articles and posts to read: If they’re too long to read quickly, I add them to my list of “files to print.” Then, when my Read/Review folder is then I print a batch.
It’s still just lists, though, and there are some strong arguments in favor of having a centralized list, e.g., only one place to look (-> easier)… ?
I agree with Matt Cornell … this is just a different form of lists, all separated in different places. There’s nothing wrong with that, if it works for you. Some people would rather create a blog post draft than have to write it on a list and then create the draft later … while others would rather have it all in one place, eliminating the need to open different applications to see everything you need to do.
Do what works best for you.
For myself, I find that adding a bunch of ideas at once to a text file is much easier than creating a bunch of blog posts at once … there’s more of a time commitment to creating a blog post draft, even if it’s only 20 seconds … that’s 15 seconds longer (or 4x as long) as just writing an idea on a list. And that makes a big difference, for me, when I have a bunch of ideas at once. If there is too much friction in writing your ideas down, it could cause you to eventually not use the system, but each person has his own threshold for such friction.
Interesting post – I do agree it’s important to keep the big picture in mind, and just commented in a similar vein to a post at David Bilinsky’s Thoughtful Legal Management blog. For Logical Extremes – that’s really the essence of GTD, as I understand it – getting a handle on the contexts, and using those to frame your next actions as opposed to artificial prioritizing systems.
Personally, I use Journler to keep my “stuff” in order. I usually have one entry for the month’s actions, and then copy and paste per context in individual entries and “project” entries. But the other half of that coin, if you will, is to take time daily to refresh my memory (as we lawyers like to say) as to the “big picture” and the “most important tasks” (MITs) for the day’s work ahead.