Ask HN: Looking for a way to organise life/time

[D3_4dl1N3]

I'm lost, loosing a lot of time, procrastinating, avoiding to take important decisions,...

I'm looking for a simple framework to be better at tracking and improving life and time managing.

Thanks in advance

[dredmorbius]

David Allen, Getting Things Done:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done>

<https://gettingthingsdone.com/>

Start with the book.

The concept is something of a perennial favourite with HN: <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%22getting+things+done%22>

A mentor, coach, therapist, or partner can help as well.

You might want to check for underlying issues such as ADHD, though ultimately you've still simply got to establish goals, make a plan, and execute on it.

[enos_feedler]

With regards to underlying issues, you can really go deep with this. I just took Rick Hansons positive neuroplacticity training and it gave me solid tools to observe my own thought patterns and where emotions were making me afraid of taking steps forward and being in alignment with my true self.

https://courses.rickhanson.net/courses/the-positive-neuropla...

[riskcomplex]

I second this. Also get MLO (My Life Organized). Bit of a learning curve but was a game changer for me. Works beautifully with concepts from GTD.

[gardenhedge]

OP run from this certified way to live your life. You'll fall into productivity self help trap

[algoatecorn]

Avoidant behavior is often rooted in anxiety and can affect even the smartest and most diligent people. A trained professional is likely to fastest way to address it e.g. therapist or clinician. Think of it as an investment that could change your life.

[kleer001]

Is your room clean?

Start there. Your life will follow from there.

It may seem trivial or "easy", but it's not. It's difficult because there's layers and layers of emotional and historical and monetary values all interacting.

[lurker137]

One method that may help is to write down a full list of actions that you do (or would like to do) regularly. Try to reduce that list to the minimum set where you think you would be satisfied if you did all those things. First categorize that list into at most 5 groups based on the things that are important to you and that you want to find balance between. Then within each group order them by how often they repeat (daily, weekly, etc.).

With that you have a clearly defined baseline of things that will make you feel like you are making progress everyday. Making the decisions and finding the motivation to take action might be hard but at least you can start with the things that you are absolutely sure of and are small enough that you can do easily.

[markus_zhang]

If the mental condition is not good then nothing else really helps, from my experience.

[evo_9]

I would look into GTD - Getting things Done - which espouses creating a 'system' for time management.

To that end I recently started using Tick-Tick as my TODO app, and reconfigured it to match how I impliment my GTD system.

It's been great; I have it split at the top between work / home and I'm making great progress on both fronts, and rarely losing track of stuff now.

This is a good video that covers both Tick-Tick and GTD; I used this as a rough guide to setup my Tick-Tick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTjYWvumZ5M

[picardythird]

> Tick-Tick

I read this as Tik Tok. I’m ashamed to admit I spent a good moment trying to figure how someone could use Tik Tok for GTD :)

[evo_9]

Haha no worries, I was initially thrown by that too. But you should check it out, it's a really fantastic app / tool. Highly recommended.

[gadders]

A lot of people find War of Are useful in overcoming procrastination and "the resistance".

https://stevenpressfield.com/books/the-war-of-art/

It's mainly aimed at creative people but can be applied more widely.

[simbar012]

Try reading Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman and thank me later

[uxp100]

It’s an enjoyable read, but bad advice for this particular problem.

In Oliver’s world everyone is suffering because they’re avoiding thinking about the things that are important, and need to deeply examine their values. That’s true, I suppose. But some people are also struggling because they can’t keep their life straight enough to go to the dentist (got a root canal coming up, after I finally went back) or pay their bills on time, and working for a living at well paid job they’re good at is torture because they simply don’t know how to operate in a regimented corporate environment with agile boards and stand ups and reporting progress every day.

It’s a frustrating read because it is written as if everything Oliver says is natural and relatable, when often it isn’t. Of course we look down on those who have hobbies (what weird ass British nonsense is this?) of course we receive constant emails from random members of the public (nope, not really a problem for me.) It often didn’t read to me that Oliver believes these things effect the “real world.” They can. People really struggle.

After all that, I actually would say sure, OP should get the book. An enjoyable mix of pop-psychology, pop-philosophy, and a few actual productivity tips. But it’s bad advice to OP without caveats. People should know what they’re buying.

[llanowarelves]

Haven't read it, but I've seen the typical stages of life (birth, kid, school, work, grandparent) drawn as a grid of cells to demonstrate the concept and it's immediately quite powerful seeing how few there are and how far along we are.

[TbobbyZ]

Bullet Journal.

[dredmorbius]

That was going to be another suggestion I could have added to my earlier comment, though I though I'd already included enough to be confusing ;-)

The advantages of bullet-journaling ("BuJo") are that it is flexible and adapts your personal needs. This is unlike most fixed-form journals.

I'd STRONGLY caution new-adopters to put an emphasis on utility over aesthetics. If you search bullet journaling on the Web, or particularly at YouTube, you'll find many cases of people getting hugely artistically creative with their journals. If that's truly your jam, then ... well, OK, I guess. But as a productivity tool, the principle emphasis in my view should be on, well, productivity.

My journals are utilitarian and not especially artistic. I do put time and thought into their organisation, but I'm not creating art-pieces.

The heart of my journals are 1) the index pages, 2) the end-references (I'll put what would otherwise be spreads and frequently-referenced information there), and 3) the actual journal pages and internal spreads themselves.

My preferences are a simple ruled or dotted journal, which I fill with the sections noted above. I do go through and number each page as I begin a new journal. That's a bit of meditative practice and discipline which IMO pays off.

And, for someone who does struggle (and is struggling) with organisation, the most valuable property of a bullet journal is that it's there for you to resume using even after you've abandoned it for days, weeks, months, or even years. With a pre-printed dated journal, you'll lose vast sections of unfilled dates. With a pre-printed structured journal, you fight with the page layout when it fails to fit your needs.

[avocadoLife]

Great system if you can make it work, but speaking from experience the physical medium of pen and paper was too limiting for me. I found I had the most ideas/todos to note down when I didn't have my journal around me, at places like the gym.