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by GZGavinZhao 137 days ago
Surely I'm not the only person who first used Linear [0] at work and then loved it so much that I started using it for personal task management...?

Sure it's not open-source, but none of the open-source tools are as polished as that.

[0]: https://linear.app
1 comments
sidv22 137 days ago
can you share how you're using it to track personal work?
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GZGavinZhao 137 days ago
I often suffer from having too many things I want to work on, plus impulsive tasks (e.g. I saw an issue on GH that I happen to know how to solve) that I go on and spend 3 hours to do right away, causing delay in everything else more important. I force myself to only spend time on tasks on the "Active" view (minus a very small set of exceptions). All other impulsive thoughts go into "Backlog" status. Every night I review the "Backlog" view and move issues that I actually decide to do in the "Active" view. Also obviously you have to periodically clean up "Backlog".

That is the most important value Linear brings to me. There are other tools that can achieve similar effects, but I learned how to do it with Linear at work so I stuck with that. On top of this, Linear has priorities, deadlines, task blocking relations, etc., that naturally reflect how I prioritize issues in life. This is the same as how I prioritize tasks to do at work. Once again there are tools to do this outside of Linear, but none of them are as polished to use and just work.

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tra3 137 days ago
I really applaud your discipline. It took me a long time to realize that the todo system you use is almost meaningless if you don't execute on the items that you prioritized.
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GZGavinZhao 137 days ago
Haha thank you, I must admit I can't make it always work out, but writing (typing) them down and forcing myself to look at the view to remind my brain is a lot better than juggling all the priorities around in my head. I really really hate planning tasks, I just want to do things and write code, so Linear is a good way for me to offload these computations and just focus on clearing the list.
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_bramses 137 days ago
I'm not OP, but heres how I connect Claude Code [1] to Linear MCP [2]. This allows CC to run a natural language type standup with your tasks when you type "standup". Other than that, I use Linear basically in the way they make it, using Projects to track long term initiatives and trying to honor my "in progress" list.

[1] - https://gist.github.com/bramses/d59fb1659ec53fda9ec33f60200f...

[2] - https://linear.app/integrations/claude

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