I’m a procrastinator, and I fail at to-do lists. That’s how this series started, back in 2019. Since then, I’ve tried to-do lists, calendars, journaling, checklists, and tracking where my time goes.
This series collects those experiments: what worked, what didn’t, and what I’m still figuring out about organizing time, tasks, and days, especially when working remotely.
23 January 2019
I tried to-do lists many many times, and after a while I always failed. Being a procrastinator doesn't really help when it comes to to-do lists. Here is my reasoning on the root causes of the problem and how I decided to fix it.
19 February 2021
When it comes to to-do lists, I'm terrible. How do I get better at managing my activities and time? Context switching seems to be the real culprit. I'm pretty sure I won't get any better at to-do lists.
24 February 2021
Your day is a mess. By the end of the day, the predominant feeling is that you probably got nothing done. Before trying to address any problem, it's essential to understand which issues we're facing.
1 March 2021
Brainstorming alone is painful for me. Questions like 'what can I improve?' or 'what's going wrong?' hardly get answered. Journaling is helping me in shaping what's next.
20 May 2021
Dealing with plan disruptions is never easy. Unfortunately, all the involved people will pay the price one way or the other. However, there are some actions we can put in place to mitigate the effects of a planning disruption.
17 November 2021
We believe we're surrounded by people who accomplish many things, and we feel we do nothing. We struggle to keep up, and we achieve little to nothing. Why is that, and can we do something about it?
10 January 2022
I don't want to waste brain cycles to remember things that aren't worth remembering. To-do lists and checklists are a much better approach. They help me not to forget things, and simultaneously, they free up my brainpower for more important matters.
19 September 2022
I'm so bad at to-do lists. At the same time, if I don't write things down, I forget everything. So what? It turns out that with a bit of inventiveness, I can make to-do lists mostly work for me.
30 June 2023
I've been working remotely for Particular Software for the last ten years. To this day, I still feel guilty for taking time off during regular working hours, even though we don't have working hours at all. Why is that?
19 March 2026
We might be finding ourselves in a vicious loop, our productivity is a disaster, we're putting in more and more hours, but things get even worse. Maybe we're not the problem.