How Jeff Atwood works

[columbo]

		Do not under any circumstances keep to-do lists or use to-do apps. 
		If you can't remember the most important things you need to do every 
		day, you should work on that. And if you can't remember something 
		you "need" to do, it's probably not worth doing in the 
		first place.

Wow. This is terrible advice. Sure it may work for some people who only have a small handful of tasks but for others who have a set of hectic projects (fix this, rewrite that, call her, email him) or even life goals (write a book, make a video game, learn to speak russian, teach daughter how to fight a bear) todo lists and goalsetting is incredibly important.

[frou_dh]

Atwood seems to have a penchant for stating half-baked opinions very forcefully.

Todo systems are not just for important things. They're also for mundane things. A few examples from my own:

- Get the share of that £xxx bill from a housemate.

- Every Tuesday and Friday: Move trash kerbside.

- At least weekly: Process any unopened postal mail I have sitting around.

- At least monthly: Check my online bank and scan for any unexpected transactions.

Why on earth shouldn't things like these be stored and optionally teed up by a system?

[crazygringo]

I agree. I've gone through times in my life where I didn't have a lot of direct responsibilities, and my job was more idea-oriented. And I discovered that not having an agenda or to-do lists was incredibly liberating.

But I've also gone through phases of my life where I would have been completely lost without a to-do list, because there are 12 different things to take care of tomorrow, and 8 the day after, etc., and they're non-negotiable, and my memory just isn't that good.

If you find yourself in a position in life where you can get away with not having to-do lists, that's fantastic, but to present this as blanket "do not under any circumstances" advice is just... idiotic.

[pan69]

I'm turning 40 in 10 days and never in my life have I had a dairy or an a to-do list of some kind. I might scribble down a phone number once in a while on a piece of paper, but I think that's about it.

I pretty much live by the same philosophy, if I can't remember it, it probably wasn't important (to me). It might be that the "to me" is the key here. :)

Edit: Oh, forgot to mention, I run a pretty hectic web development business.

[GimbalLock]

Between this and Atwood's "Don't learn to code", I can't find a redeeming characteristic of this guy. It seems like he gets his jollies by making people feel bad because they don't code like does or think like he does.

[btilly]

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4614676 for previous discussion of a blog post by Jeff on this exact topic.

[PakG1]

There is a reason why pilot checklists has become an airline industry standard. In a lot of situations, checklists simply do work better than anything else. "Do not under any circumstances" is hyperbole that should not be written. Without that hyperbole, OP can at least get away with saying, "airline work and Jeff Atwood's work is an apples and oranges comparison".

http://www.atchistory.org/History/checklst.htm

[mootothemax]

Very much agreed with you, it's astoundingly bad advice. If you have a day job and work on stuff in your spare time, I don't see how you'll end up in a better place by NOT making task lists.

[nnq]

It's good advice if you are more of a MAKER (developer/engineer/inventor) and less of a MANAGER or LEADER (being a "software architect", "lead developer", or even just having a very complicated personal life that involves taking care of other people and solving other non-autonomous people's problems - like just having a bunch of needy kids - can turn you from a MAKER to a MANAGER even if your "job" is just to brilliantly code stuff up)

I think there's a metric, some kind of sweetspot for (brain capacity e.g. working memory times "power to focus" times mental stability)/(things to manage times how unpredictable and risky the managed things can be), after which you need to use external "crutches for your mind" ...but it's entirely your choice if you choose to live in the zone where you can do everything with your mind or you need to expand beyond it (or you might just have a very chaotic mind to begin with and need the crutches for everything).

[prophetjohn]

As someone constantly context-switching between a job and academia, I can't imagine how I would get by without a todo list. Mine is just a plain text file that is always open in Sublime from a Dropbox folder, but without it, I wouldn't be able to keep straight when that program in operating systems is due or what I have to do for linear algebra when I've been pairing on new story development or database setup automation all day.

[shanselman]

Ya, Jeff's a friend but this is insanity.

[dustincoates]

It's great advice for people who have the autonomy to set their own to-do lists. If you have other people you're working for, it's difficult to say, "I couldn't remember to do it so I don't think it was worth doing."

It reminds me a lot of Mark Cuban's advice of never having a set schedule or meeting times. Great idea in theory and when you get to Atwood's or Cuban's stature it's a lot more implementable.

[cgh]

Fully agree. Prioritised to-do lists changed my life. There's a helpful little book, "How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life" by Alan Lakein that lays it all out. Highly recommended, although it dates back to the '70s so some of the work examples used are, er, anachronistic.

[deepGem]

I think what he means to say is to fix the root cause of bad memory, as against using to-do lists. I tend to agree. According to the book - Moonwalking with Einstein, anyone's memory can be fixed. So there's that :).

[donniezazen]

Will you forget to write a book if you don't have it in your todo list?

[mangler]

"call her"??? Atwood never "calls her"! She calls Atwood! Hey and I don't mean in the Hollywood kind of way - Atwood Da Man!!!

[onosendai]

No operating system I know of, no matter how many gigabytes of memory you have, can remember more than one copied item at a time. That's ridiculous!

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the functionality he's talking about, but hasn't KDE's Klipper (http://userbase.kde.org/Klipper) and GNOME's Glipper (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glipper) solved this problem long ago? I'm sure there are other clipboard managers for other OS'es as well.

[mikeevans]

I think he means built-in to the OS. He probably uses something like the ones you mentioned, as he claims that the "only must-have app I need is a global clipboard history application."

[pinchyfingers]

First thing I thought of was the Emacs kill-ring. Emacs has been around since the 70's, so it's not like the concept hasn't been out there for awhile.

[donrhummy]

He uses Windows so I assume he doesn't know much about Linux Distros. You're correct, Klipper was the first thing I thought of as well. I assume his OS experiences are: Mac, Windows, iOS, Android judging by his info posted.

[rohamg]

I'm the biggest advocate for plowing through every day like a tank but even I would be incredibly handicapped without a proper framework. My system is designed to keep all tasks and tactics out of my head so I can focus on strategy, vision, and execution. Folks who think they don't need a system are lucky, foolish, not all that ambitious, or have others worrying about the big picture of their lives/ companies/ industries.

[rohamg]

Ok- I would add "focused" to that list. If you're a 20 year old working on your first startup 100 hours a week then you may not need a to-do list for life (although you should certainly use one for your development!). For the rest of us, there is way too much that can possibly be done every day - and some framework for prioritization / tracking becomes essential.

[objclxt]

Did the title for the submission not have enough room, or is there some other reason "Cofounder", which is what the original LifeHacker title reads, got replaced with "founder" here?

[bostonpete]

The link itself includes "founder", not "cofounder". Maybe he later updated the title...

[DominikR]

Interesting how polarizing Jeff Atwoods views about to-do lists are.

I believe that to-do lists are just a symptom of a different problem:

Working on something you do not really care about. (sadly, most people have to do this)

If you cared about the product or whatever you are creating, and the communication between you and your customer/boss/team is good, your goals would be aligned (in most cases), thus making it very hard to miss a really important task.

Probably it would have been better for Jeff to give the advice to try working on stuff you really care about.

[acconrad]

> If you cared about the product or whatever you are creating, and the communication between you and your customer/boss/team is good, your goals would be aligned (in most cases), thus making it very hard to miss a really important task.

Ugh, this irks me to no end. What if you really care about your product, but there are so many exciting things for you to work on that you simply can't keep track of them all? It's like he's got blinders on to people who don't have the best memory.

[helper-method]

I was really disappointed after reading the article. It was far too short, and contained no useful information. Actually, what is the point of such articles anyhow?

[EnderMB]

To push their ads. These articles are perfect for sites like these and sites like LifeHacker probably make a tidy sum of money from the Reddit/HN and previously Digg crowd.

[pinchyfingers]

Why doesn't he at least give a nod to Trello when asked about to-do lists? Give your co-founder a plug!

[ojbyrne]

Where's the bias lighting? http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/11/bias-lighting.html

[dysoco]

Great, now I'm excited about that "awesome next big thing".

[rapind]

I heard he was working on a to-do list app.

[corford]

Can't find the post now (think it was on HN or Ars Technica a few months back) but I'm fairly certain "the next big thing" Jeff's working on is re-imagining how a web forum should work.

I hope he cracks it - vbulletin and friends need to die!

[bashzor]

Disappointingly uninteresting answers :(

[somesaba]

Agreed