| I used to suffer from this, i.e. overplanning and over-organising as a means of combating anxiety associated with lack of progress or organisation. I've gone through every project management tool and todo app imaginable (I've written a few too). I don't know if this helps you, but here's the advice I would have given myself from 10 years ago: 1) Just use Github issues for high level tasks, and use checklists within issue body for task breakdowns. Categorise with labels, schedule with milestones. More tools, more problems. 2) Don't plan for more than a week (a more natural time unit than a two-week sprint). I.e. your execution should not lag your plans by more than a week. The further in the future a task is, the more time consuming it is to plan it, and less accurate the plan tends to be. 3) +1 for markdown files and paper notebooks. Don't try to categorise or organise. Just use a linear, chronological (more accurately, reverse chronological) stream of text. Search when you need. 4) Keep tabular data in spreadsheets (I use Google Sheets). Nothing fancy. 5) Keep documentation as close to the code as possible, or it will go out of sync. I usually try to stick to: module = file, and documentation = comment at the top of the file/module explaining the purpose of the module. 6) Look at your completed todo list more often than your incomplete todo list. The former is a source of dopamine, the latter, a source of anxiety. |
Appreciate the advice you would've imparted on yourself 10 years ago. What stands out the most is "Don't plan for more than a week." When I read this, I noticed a thought come up: how does this person ensure that their short term (i.e. week) maps to long term goals/values etc?