One year of keeping a tada list

[myself248]

Initially I kept my ToDo in a text file and I'd just delete things when I did them. Nice clean list of what's remaining, but after a few weeks I felt AWFUL, the list grew faster than it shrank, and it felt like I never made headway.

Now I don't delete things. I put a little + at the start of the line for anything I did, a - for anything I decided not to do, and a / for anything I did partially but needs to be revisited. I write a new list each day, carrying-forward items that I feel are worth revisiting.

And what's huge is that I can scroll down and see previous lists, years worth, and read all the stuff I did. It's enormous compared to the remaining todos, and apparently that's psychologically important.

[QuercusMax]

For similar psychological reasons I started keeping detailed notes of everything I did at work, at a time when it felt like I wasn't making any progress anywhere. Just seeing a record of when I helped someone else fix a bug, or all the times I moved the ball just by an inch or so - it really makes a difference.

If I have 50 pages of things I spent time on, I must actually be doing something!

[alfiedotwtf]

First up, make sure that the Big Ass Textfile is stored in Git (you don’t want your life’s TODO list suddenly vanish).

Now that it’s in Git, feel free to delete each DONE task.

And finally, have a cron job that on the hour does something like ‘git diff > message.txt; git commit -F message.txt’

<— this way, you have your day’s TADA list AND your list in now searchable with dates via ‘git log’

(This was my TODO list for years until I declared TODO bankruptcy and have gone back to physical cards)

[AstroJetson]

I have the same system, todo become done. I also add done things that I didn’t expect/ plan to do. (Life’s curve ball). I also started tracking “what is the worst thing that happened today”. That’s added perspective that I may think I had a bad day, when in fact I got these things done and the worst thing was actually pretty minimal.

[lelanthran]

I went the opposite way - my tool aggressively prunes the list when you mark things done. I wanted to improve the signal:noise ratio.

I suppose a simpler way to achieve both goals is to alias `todo` to `vim -O ~/.todo ~/.tada` and simply move items from one file to another :-)

[satvikpendem]

Markdown, I use `[ ] - task` and then once it's done I put an X in the []. It works great plus works with subtasks, subsubtasks, etc.

[zahlman]

It also means that you have immediate context for your / items when you revisit them.

[linsomniac]

I've been doing a work-oriented "what I did today" list for ~25 years, and really like it. Originally it started because I needed to bill for my time, but when I went to my current job (over a decade ago) I kept doing it. In my iteration, it is a concise sentence about each thing I've worked on that day. At the end of the month I go back through and review it and write up a "Wins" list.

It's surprisingly useful; I share it with my coworkers and we often consult it if we notice something has been behaving differently starting at a certain date to see what was going on then.

I keep it in a simple text file, running in a tmux on a server, so I have connections to it from my laptop and my desktop. It's currently 19,509 lines.

[dangoodmanUT]

I’m praying you have backups. That last paragraph gives me anxiety

[johnfn]

> It's surprisingly useful; I share it with my coworkers and we often consult it if we notice something has been behaving differently starting at a certain date to see what was going on then.

Don't you have commit logs for this??

[andai]

> Maybe the most obvious con: a tada list forces you to have an accomplishment each day so you can write it down, and this added stress to my day.

Maybe it makes more sense to have a box per week instead of per day. Or even per month!

At least in my own life I've noticed that focusing on daily output tends to be demoralizing, whereas if I look back over the months I am often amazed by what has come out of me.

[ardeaver]

I can also imagine that you might need to change your definition of what an accomplishment is. I tend to think of it as something that has a measurable output, but difficult-to-measure progress towards an outcome is also something (despite what product managers might think)

[sublinear]

I think weekly or bi-weekly is best since you're aligning yourself with the time scale that most workplaces tend to operate on.

I've actually had good conversations with nervous junior devs to help them see the value of their contributions this way. There's a lot less reason to stress out if you're working steadily and see that things are going according to plan.

I know devs can be focused on the literal tasks at hand, but the "10k ft view" is not just a cheesy thing people say and it should not be ignored. It gives perspective.

[nicbou]

I would stick to a daily note because you lose a lot of granularity after a week. With journaling at least, I rarely remember how I felt even 24 hours ago.

[egonschiele]

It's a good idea that I might try, though I do like being able to see exactly what I did each day!

[IshKebab]

> have a box per week

Sounds like the weekly report most of my bosses have demanded.

[fastasucan]

>Maybe the most obvious con: a tada list forces you to have an accomplishment each day so you can write it down, and this added stress to my day.

The problem here is that they think it forces you to have an accomplishment. Just write what you did in short form. IT can be "Was very stressed and couldn't get anything substantial done, attended the monthly developer meeting and did some work on documentation".

I do this as well to better remember what I have done at work, to quickly be able to document my value towards the company, and to have some "tabs" to show if there are any questions regarding what I did a day.

[egonschiele]

Unfortunately a pre-req would be me severely downgrading what I think is worth writing down as an accomplishment, or switching to writing down meaningless tasks (though that IS what the original tada list idea recommends)

[jeffrallen]

I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of excellent work that others do, things that surprised and delighted me, or difficult situations they handled with professionalism. Makes me smile just thinking of it. It will be useful during an upcoming review.

[commandersaki]

I have had many accomplishments, and I've forgotten them all. When it comes to interviewing, I've forgotten most things or can't do easy recall that I can't even speak to them. I have no desire to change though; as long as I made those accomplishments is all that matters, it's kind of like giving gifts - I don't bother remembering what I did for whom.

[Tade0]

This is lovely, but in certain life circumstances I've found it more useful to have a to-dont-list, as in: list of things I would really like to do, but shouldn't because there are more pressing matters to attend to and I need to pace myself, otherwise things will turn ugly really quick.

Example: day before Christmas eve - the last workday in this region I found myself standing in line to a car wash. There was just one guy ahead of me, but those who were already soaping up their vehicles didn't seem to be in a hurry and it was already 4pm, so sundown over here and I still had other errands run that day.

I turned around and the car is currently still dirty, but it'll remain so until I can make time for that, so in 2026.

[egonschiele]

The list has helped me plan as its forced me to cut things, and just admit I won't have time to do them. For example, I took about fifty books off my shelf and to the little free library. They've been sitting there for years.

[medstrom]

Not clear in your example if you have a to-dont list, or just decide "don't" in the moment.

[dupdup]

Person that has the ability to have post here in HN is enough of productive at least from most of us reading here. But for us, most of the time staring at the screen reading HN is also nice to keep a list here is what I do: I have a notebook on my desk that has horizontal lines(what is the word for it) I guess one line is .75 cm wide using that as a day of week I noted what I do that day with codes HackerNews hn, game, read, first job(fj), second job(sj), youtube you, bodybuilding bb, fut for thinking about future life. I keep the list over detail to show you how much a mundane life i have. But be sure more items make you more happy for that day. SO I mean please keep a list of what you are doing taht day

[gnarlouse]

What I want is:

A todo list that feeds into a calendar (with a high degree of flexibility) that feeds into a tada list.

I’ve been working on this casually for the better part of a year and hope to release something that is home-hostable later in 2026, once I’ve lived with it for a bit.

Like I don’t want to remember that I need to do something, I just want a time slot in my calendar that auto populates against a set of constraints, so I can go from moment to moment in a flow. I want to be able to control that todo list and my goals’ time/space constraints with natural language—not some godforsaken form that gives you carpal tunnel. And then I want to see how my progress grows and how much I’m committing to what I want to do.

[Lalabadie]

For similar reasons, I ended up sticking to a bullet journal (ish) format after I tried it ~10 years ago. I don't do long-term planning with it, but I have 1-2 weeks laid out in advance, and years of stuff logged.

It keeps a record of things done and lived. In terms of planning and task keeping, the paper format also forces me to let things fall off the list if they won't get done after all.

I also joke that I'll be the person who can actually answer if one day an investigator asks me "What were you doing on the night of November 22nd, 2019?"

[LightBug1]

I kind of use my calendar to do this ... if I'm frazzled at the end of the week, it helps to see what I actually did as frazzle brain will have forgotten

[koliber]

I love the name. I’ve been doing this for a while. My name for it is super boring “todo archive” but I am renaming it next year.

Keeping an archive of things I’ve done is great for my mental health. Occasionally, I even look search through it and the associated notes and fish out something useful.

[andsoitis]

> tada list

Ah I thought (and hoped) it was gonna be a list of epiphanies, interesting learnings, new sweetness. You know… taDA!

[medstrom]

You mean... an aha list?

[petesergeant]

I managed to do this for most of the first half of the year, and it was very rewarding indeed. Somehow it sort of dropped off, and something was lost, so I think definitely something to pick up again this coming year.

[bawolff]

I like this idea.

I often feel like im better at starting (or just planning) projects then seeing them through, so maybe doing this will force me to finish something.

[neonnoodle]

Lovely paintings!

[victrflow]

Love this, I’ll definitely give it a try for a while. I did something similar a while back but on a monthly basis

[niek_pas]

I did not know about value studies but I have to say, those are gorgeous works of art in and of themselves!

[tambourine_man]

“learned took a CSS course”

Extra word there

[rw_panic0_0]

that's a nice practice that I do from time to time. Like when my inner self critic starts being too critical ("I'm not doing enough" kind of stuff), or doing things gets harder for some reason, I incorporate the routine of writing done things at the end of the day, and when the situation normalizes I stop doing it. It's usually like a month or two

[andai]

It kind of sounds like there is a part of you that is abusive and you are rewarding it with this practice, giving it what it wants. I would personally lean in the opposite direction!

[AuthAuth]

Ragebaiting tsk tsk You know that the watercolor painting is a gift to his friends and if made with AI it would be undermined to the worthlessness.

[GabriDaFirenze]

I think I see where you're coming from but, from personal experience, AI has not much to do with one's interest in learning how to paint or draw. I've picked up drawing again this year not only as a passion but it's something I can create with my own hands. It doesn't matter that AI can do it and can do it much better, it's that I can do it. For fun, for relaxing, for meditating, ...

[jebarker]

How does the existence of AI make watercolor painting less of a challenge for a human?

[chairmansteve]

Like walking or cycling instead of driving?

We should get rid of the 100m sprint in the olympics because a car can do it faster?

And anyway, a water color in the original cannot be mistaken for a printed ai picture.

[tayo42]

Ai can't do anything like a good water color painting. Also they're physical, like any painting, they look different in real life

[plagiarist]

Could humanity keep some things for personal enjoyment and enrichment? As a treat?

[bowsamic]

Why is that impressive?