[pancakemouse]

What this shows to me, as someone who has committed some of the unholy crimes above, is that people want their system, however esoteric, to come naturally to them.

I think reading docs, understanding a new system which someone else has designed, and fitting one's brain into _their_ organisational structure is the hard part. Harder than designing one's own system. It's the reason many don't stick with an off-the-shelf app. Including Org mode.

[Aurornis]

> What this shows to me, as someone who has committed some of the unholy crimes above, is that people want their system, however esoteric, to come naturally to them

I think this is a vocal minority. Outside of internet comment sections, most everyone I know doesn’t care that much about their todo list software.

The most productive people I ever worked with all had really minimal productivity software. For one person it was a Google doc with nested lists. I know several people who preferred physical sticky notes or 3x5 note cards.

A lot of the people I’ve worked with who built elaborate productivity systems and custom software weren’t all that productive. They seemingly spent as much time doing productivity rituals and rearranging their productivity software stack as they did doing actual work. I count the really heavy Notion users in this category because I’ve recently been pulling my hair out dealing with a couple PMs who think “reorganizing Notion” and adding more rules for Notion is a good use of their time each week.

The most extreme example I remember was the eccentric coworker who was building an AI-powered productivity tool that was supposed to optimize his todo lists and schedule them according to his daily rhythms. He spent so much time working on it that our manager had to remind him daily to stay on track with his real work. He was obsessed with “productivity tooling” but the productivity was secondary.

Not everyone is like this, but it happens a lot.

[kilroy123]

I strongly agree. I think it's a form of procrastinating.

I read about all these complex systems for notes and second brains and whatnot.

All procrastinating imho.

[hhmc]

There’s a now quite dated comment from Merlin Mann: "Joining a Facebook group about productivity is like buying a chair about jogging.”

It’s fuzzy - but my recollection was Mann was a fairly renown productivity influencer (although I guess we wouldn’t have called it that then), who had an apostasy about it all.

[popoflojo]

The real takeaway from your story is that it's easy to stay on task when you're interested in the task. Your coworker just didn't care about his work. But if his work was creating a productivity tool then he'd probably love his work and be productive.

[viraptor]

On managers side the equivalent is making fancy JIRA workflows with all the fancy fields so that everyone is informed. Makes people annoyed with extra work and that time could be spent just talking to people to understand what's actually happening.

[_mu]

So much of it is empty productivity, all prepping for the work but never actually doing it.

Like the old joke about the programmers spouse who died a virgin because every night all the programmer did was sit at the edge of the bed talking about how awesome it was going to be when they finally did it.

[zxexz]

I’m very guilty of trying all sorts of productivity software as a form of procrastination. The best one did, in fact, turn out to be index cards and a pencil.

[bluGill]

The phhsical copy served an important purpose: it forces you to admit you will never do something and so give up on is. until I die it is safe to assume I will eat 3 meals per day. (It won't be 100% because of sickness but close enough) thus if I'm out of some food I will need a todo list to replace it. However if I never finish the ukuele I've started it won't matter and it is reasonable for me to give up on it.

[slightwinder]

> The most productive people I ever worked with all had really minimal productivity software.

What about quality? Often, people are very productive, because they sacrifice quality for speed, especially the "annoying" longterm-values of products/decisions.

> They seemingly spent as much time doing productivity rituals and rearranging their productivity software stack as they did doing actual work

It's a different kind of productivity. Just not as valuable for the company.

[potatolicious]

The term that comes to mind, and one of my favorite concepts, is "progressive disclosure", which is a concept we really ought to be more mindful of.

One of the perks of just-a-text-file-with-a-bunch-of-addons is that it enables progressive disclosure - it takes no learning curve to just get in and use the tool on a basic level, but additional complexity (and power) can be introduced over time.

The problem with a purpose-built app is that there's a minimum level of new concepts to learn before the tool is even minimally useful, and that's a barrier to adoption.

A good example of this in action is something like Markdown. It's just text and will show up fine without you learning anything, but as you pick up more syntax it builds on top - and if you learn some markup syntax but not others, it doesn't prevent you from using the subset you know. There is a clear path to adding new knowledge and ability.

[datameta]

Right, instead of fomo over not using the extra features of utilizing the right flow - people tend to experience the want/need to incrementally increase complexity when using roll-your-own software

[BrtByte]

Markdown is a perfect analogy

[miroljub]

The whole point of org-mode is that it's so malleable, that you can extend it to be whatever you want it to be, much easier than writing your own, ad-hoc, bug-ridden reimplementation of org-mode.

[reddit_clone]

Org-mode is the most appropriate answer. It is as simple or as sophisticated as we want it to be.

Obviously one needs to be an Emacs user first

[basch]

What I gather is people really like the blank whiteboard. There’s something about Notepad and Excel, the freedom, the linitlessness, of having a blank canvas and being able to do anything.

Todo software is too opinionated. It’s not flexible enough to allow you to break rules. You can’t move things around in a way that allows you to control visual white space between entries. Everything “is something” (a task, an event) vs just being (text.)

[fmbb]

Also, if you are a developer by trade a lot of these features are quick and easy to implement.

[barbazoo]

And might even be fun to implement and maintain.

[russellbeattie]

Exactly. Most people wish they could customize their Todo app or system to their specific preference or need, but have no way of making it happen. Devs can, so they do.

What's interesting is AI is going to change this. Entering a prompt for an app that has all the features you want is already pretty trivial, and will only get better.

[j45]

Systems you design yourself for yourself naturally will come easier to us.

[docmars]

Yep, at the risk of repeating what you said: I think this is why so many project management / todo apps exist with their own flavor of the very basics. It's a reflection of those wishes that feel natural to us individually, and it just so happens many of these apps mesh well with our model of thinking and organizing.

This is also why it's so difficult to get teams on the same page about project management in their respective workplaces.

[nottorp]

When you start structuring your TODO list, you will miss adding stuff that isn't easy to fit into the structure to said list.

And possibly regret it 3 months later...

[cwnyth]

I think in part because larger systems aren't typically custom made to the user's exact workflow (especially because users don't typically have one single workflow anyway!). So not only do I have to get into someone else's mind, but it feels ill-fitted to my own mind. Thus, it's also more inefficient.

[conception]

Note taking and task management are two things which everyone has a slightly different style and need. There is no one size fits all and in a group someone will always find some aspect lacking.

[cjonas]

Ya, I don't need my todo list to have "docs" at all.