Reader, I want to (once again) talk to you about the life-changing power of making a list and putting it in order.
Ambiguity of like, “what are we gonna build?” or “how are we supposed to build this?” Or was it supposed to be A or B or why did we make this decision? So having the checklist of “this is the thing,” it is a very, very cheap way to eliminate most of the ambiguity.
– Kristján Pétursson, Human Skills 018 — Creating Clarity From Ambiguity
Tasks lists are great for capturing and organizing what you want/need to do. They are sometimes good for thinking through how to execute on those tasks and projects.
Ordinarily, I’m too focused on all those incomplete items The empty check boxes, the lines that aren’t crossed through. So much potential. It’s exciting and overwhelming!
I rarely use my task list to reflect upon what I’ve done. To retrospect on how much I accomplished any given day or capture a post-hoc note or two on follow-ups, what worked, or to merely pat myself on the back for a day of honest work.
So I’m trying this right now! But, applications could stand to add more affordances for looking back in time too. This goes for applications like Things as much as it goes for Jira, etc. It’s probably our work and hustle culture. 🤷♂️ Always looking forward and rarely slowing down to say “hey, I did this, let’s get excited about that!”
One of the nice things about Kanban boards is you eventually end up with a giant pile of things that were done, and that’s a nice way to feel the momentum building that a bunch of stuff got done. Let’s get more of that.
