Initially I kept my ToDo in a text file and I'd just delete things when I did them. Nice clean list of what's remaining, but after a few weeks I felt AWFUL, the list grew faster than it shrank, and it felt like I never made headway.
Now I don't delete things. I put a little + at the start of the line for anything I did, a - for anything I decided not to do, and a / for anything I did partially but needs to be revisited. I write a new list each day, carrying-forward items that I feel are worth revisiting.
And what's huge is that I can scroll down and see previous lists, years worth, and read all the stuff I did. It's enormous compared to the remaining todos, and apparently that's psychologically important.
I've been doing a work-oriented "what I did today" list for ~25 years, and really like it. Originally it started because I needed to bill for my time, but when I went to my current job (over a decade ago) I kept doing it. In my iteration, it is a concise sentence about each thing I've worked on that day. At the end of the month I go back through and review it and write up a "Wins" list.
It's surprisingly useful; I share it with my coworkers and we often consult it if we notice something has been behaving differently starting at a certain date to see what was going on then.
I keep it in a simple text file, running in a tmux on a server, so I have connections to it from my laptop and my desktop. It's currently 19,509 lines.
Well, I haven't lost them in over a decade... So I have a pretty good track record. The system it's hosted on has had at least one, maybe two hardware failures over that time. A system isn't done being set up until it has backups up and running.
However, that said, over ~3 decades I've found that having a successful rsync exit code and alerting when that is not true, along with periodic "full" rsync checksum runs, is effectively a failsafe way of ensuing a good backup.
For our less critical systems, this plus "spot checking" by regularly going in and looking at "what did this file look like a few weeks ago" (something we commonly use backups for), has proven pretty effective while also being low work.
For critical systems, definitely do test recoveries. Our database server, for example, every week recovers the production database into our staging and dev environments, so backup problems tend to get noticed pretty quickly.
> It's surprisingly useful; I share it with my coworkers and we often consult it if we notice something has been behaving differently starting at a certain date to see what was going on then.
Commit logs are isolated and per repository. In large organizations, you're usually working with numerous services, often with different owners and split across a number of repositories. Figuring out what caused something to happen can be a fairly complicated process, especially when you don't know exactly where to start digging. Having an overview like this can be invaluable and save you a lot of time.
Not for everything, but things that I do have commit logs for it's a needle in a haystack problem of which repo the commit logs would be in. At work we have ~120 repos, at least a dozen of which I'm likely to have been in over a couple weeks. Other things are likely a ticket rather than a commit (running OS updates, switching to a new haproxy might be a commit from days or weeks earlier when done in staging but the commit log wouldn't show when it was activated in production).
It's very powerful having just a few sentences I can read about what was going on specifically on a given day.
> Maybe the most obvious con: a tada list forces you to have an accomplishment each day so you can write it down, and this added stress to my day.
Maybe it makes more sense to have a box per week instead of per day. Or even per month!
At least in my own life I've noticed that focusing on daily output tends to be demoralizing, whereas if I look back over the months I am often amazed by what has come out of me.
I can also imagine that you might need to change your definition of what an accomplishment is. I tend to think of it as something that has a measurable output, but difficult-to-measure progress towards an outcome is also something (despite what product managers might think)
I think weekly or bi-weekly is best since you're aligning yourself with the time scale that most workplaces tend to operate on.
I've actually had good conversations with nervous junior devs to help them see the value of their contributions this way. There's a lot less reason to stress out if you're working steadily and see that things are going according to plan.
I know devs can be focused on the literal tasks at hand, but the "10k ft view" is not just a cheesy thing people say and it should not be ignored. It gives perspective.
The psychological insight about scrolling back to see what you've accomplished is spot on. Traditional todo lists are demotivating because they only show what's left undone.
I'm curious about a few things:
1. How do you handle things that carry over multiple days? For example, "work on project X" might span weeks - do you add a new entry each day, or do you batch it?
2. Do you track time estimates or actual time spent? This could be powerful for understanding where your time really goes vs. where you think it goes.
3. What's your retention/archival strategy? 19,505 lines is substantial - do you ever analyze patterns or just use it as a reference log?
4. Have you noticed any behavior changes from keeping this list? Does it make you more or less productive, or just more aware?
5. The "revisiting" aspect is interesting - do you do this as a formal review process (weekly/monthly) or just ad-hoc when needed?
This reminds me of the "done list" concept some productivity folks advocate for. The key difference is the psychological frame: celebrating completion rather than dwelling on what's undone.
I have had many accomplishments, and I've forgotten them all. When it comes to interviewing, I've forgotten most things or can't do easy recall that I can't even speak to them. I have no desire to change though; as long as I made those accomplishments is all that matters, it's kind of like giving gifts - I don't bother remembering what I did for whom.
I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of excellent work that others do, things that surprised and delighted me, or difficult situations they handled with professionalism. Makes me smile just thinking of it. It will be useful during an upcoming review.
I kind of use my calendar to do this ... if I'm frazzled at the end of the week, it helps to see what I actually did as frazzle brain will have forgotten
that's a nice practice that I do from time to time. Like when my inner self critic starts being too critical ("I'm not doing enough" kind of stuff), or doing things gets harder for some reason, I incorporate the routine of writing done things at the end of the day, and when the situation normalizes I stop doing it. It's usually like a month or two
It kind of sounds like there is a part of you that is abusive and you are rewarding it with this practice, giving it what it wants. I would personally lean in the opposite direction!
What I mean is, you're reinforcing a mechanism of conditional self-approval. A Sisyphean endeavor by definition!
Giving yourself credit for what you've done is fine, but if it comes from a feeling of insufficiency, then at best it's symptom relief that helps you avoid the underlying issue.
I do agree that it's "bad" to need a reason to justify your existence and happiness, but that's totally separate from evaluating your performance at work. I think you're assuming too much.
nah that's actually a practice I learned while being in CBT therapy. I mean, it's not that you reward some bad part of yourself, it's that sometimes you stop noticing all the things you do, like get used to all the stuff and start devaluing it. And by journaling and explicitly stating them you make it clear for yourself that you, in fact, do a lot of things throughout the day. Like "I did nothing today except working and doing house chores, nothing too much, I do it almost everyday" but doing such things and doing it good still requires a lot of effort
10 PRINT "You didn't do enough! Scum! Do more!"
20 GOTO 10
loop by noticing the things you do during the day and bowing and scraping, offering them up to the loop, trying to convince it that you did do enough. It doesn't have a definition of enough it only has a demand for more. When does a hoarder list all the things they own and then feel happy because they won at hoarding and they can stop now?
Worse, by trying to argue, the loop strengthens. It's inside your brain, it's a cognitive behaviour, apparently somehow you learned it as an important message to remind yourself of. Arguing back that you did enough isn't "hearing the important message" so the message gets more insistent, louder - HEY! LISTEN! you DID NOT do enough! SCUM! DO MORE!
The cognitive behaviour to change is the judging, not the response to the judging. Where did I learn to beat myself up about productivity with that addict's loop? Why am I holding on to it when it hurts and makes me feel bad? What desirable behaviour or values is it trying to achieve that makes me unable to drop it? How can I uphold the same values and encourage the same positive behaviours in a positive-reinforcement way instead of a negative-reinforcement way so I can let go of that and feel less shitty?
> "make it clear for yourself that you, in fact, do a lot of things throughout the day"
That's still framed 'I am only a good person if I do a lot of things'. It's you who controls your definition of a good person. You who holds the definition so high that you feel you don't live up to it. You who creates the bad feelings when you judge that you don't live up to the definition you control. Which is a sitcom farce of a way to live. The missing bit is that you didn't consciously set it, you accidentally learned it from childhood or society or religion or osmosis, and don't know that you can change it; it feels immutable and obviously correct.[1]
Either way it's the same chore of making of your bed, but in one multiverse you feel negatively compelled to do it, you feel bad while doing it and dreadful if you miss it. In another multiverse you choose to do it, feel good while doing it, and if you miss it that's fine. In one multiverse you're imagining future-you having a nice bed to climb into tonight so you're feeling mild positive emotions (satisfied, pleased, helpful, kind, useful). And if you miss doing it then future-you can forgive you because it's not a big deal and you're feeling neutral. In another multiverse you do it while imagining your tyrant grandmother scowling at you. However much effort you put into making the bed, it's never enough. If you imagine missing it, she's screaming at you-aged-6 about how you're the laziest child she's ever known and you'll end up homeless and destitute, an embarassment to her, a disgrace to your family, and she's going to smack some obedience into you[2]. So you do it while feeling mild to strong negative emotions (anxious, afraid, bad, scared, shaking, panicky). And you're probably aware as an adult how unfair this is so add in some (angry, resentful, unfairly treated, bitter) and if you can't easily get away from it some (frustration, contempt of yourself, envy of/inferior to people who don't live like this). There's no way to win in this multiverse - there's no way to get positive emotions. The best case is doing it promptly and thoroughly and trying to minimize the negative emotions by whirlwinding through and not thinking about it.
You can't list all the days of your life that you made your bed and show them to imaginary-tyrant-grandma hoping she will approve and you can feel good forever. She isn't real, she's a "10 SCOWL; 20 GOTO 10" loop stuck in your head. That mocking image of her will never be proud of you, never be satisfied. Nor can you try to say "she might not be happy but I can be happy about all the times I did this" because she's in your head so that you can't be happy and because that unhappiness drives you to put more effort in, which is the behaviour she wanted to instill. Reinforced by the nagging almost sub-conscious image of lying in a ditch with your mother disowning you, which gets stronger the more you try to be happy, and weaker every time you are scared and work harder.
The tyrant-grandma-loop is the cognitive behaviour that needs a mechanic, and all the related lifetime of images/ideas/behaviours that are feeding into it, or fed by it. Back to the article, after an entire year of tada-list, the author writes "forces you to have an accomplishment each day so you can write it down, and this added stress to my day". Hmm.
[1] (Then you think that if someone says 'you can change it', they must be saying 'it is easy to change'. Then you either feel bad that you haven't succeeded at something easy so you must be stupid, or you dismiss them by saying "thanks I'm cured" because you "tried" ignoring it and that didn't work so they must be stupid)
[2] Which, sadly, she probably felt was absolutely true, handed down from her mother or father, a torment she also lived under her whole life.
I managed to do this for most of the first half of the year, and it was very rewarding indeed. Somehow it sort of dropped off, and something was lost, so I think definitely something to pick up again this coming year.
I think I see where you're coming from but, from personal experience, AI has not much to do with one's interest in learning how to paint or draw. I've picked up drawing again this year not only as a passion but it's something I can create with my own hands. It doesn't matter that AI can do it and can do it much better, it's that I can do it. For fun, for relaxing, for meditating, ...
In today's day and age I definitely would. That's my perspective though and we don't have to have the same expectations from the tada list.
"Today I meditated through drawing" is an accomplishment to me worth my personal tada list. Might not be for everyone though, I can understand that.
Someone else was making a good point that a daily tada list might be unnecessary pressure and a weekly one feels more balanced.
To add more color though, I personally would expect this to compound into an overall tada list similar to OP. At the end of the year I could amount to a lot of drawings and notice improvements over time. But again, AI has nothing to do with it.
If we give up on personal accomplishments because "AI can do it" we would go nowhere. But that's my 2c.
Multiplying two 100 digit numbers requires the application of a fixed algorithm which can be learned. If you don't know the algorithm it's challenging, if you do it's not.
But that is not true of painting. Painting requires choosing a subject (for its subjective qualities) and then translating what you _want_ to capture about that subject and how you want to represent it in paint on some medium. You will also be applying a theory of mind and perception about the audience of the painting since you probably want it to appeal to them. All of these choices and the skill to combine them into a painting that achieves what you want is vastly more challenging than multiplication.
Multiplication is akin to paint by numbers.
EDIT: it actually strikes me that this conversation gets to the crux of why AI art is so polarizing. It depends whether you view art predominantly as being about the thing that is created or the process of creation.
Now I don't delete things. I put a little + at the start of the line for anything I did, a - for anything I decided not to do, and a / for anything I did partially but needs to be revisited. I write a new list each day, carrying-forward items that I feel are worth revisiting.
And what's huge is that I can scroll down and see previous lists, years worth, and read all the stuff I did. It's enormous compared to the remaining todos, and apparently that's psychologically important.
It's surprisingly useful; I share it with my coworkers and we often consult it if we notice something has been behaving differently starting at a certain date to see what was going on then.
I keep it in a simple text file, running in a tmux on a server, so I have connections to it from my laptop and my desktop. It's currently 19,509 lines.
I only had to see one machine "that was being backed up" unable to restore from backup. Wasn't mine, but was enough to teach me to test them.
However, that said, over ~3 decades I've found that having a successful rsync exit code and alerting when that is not true, along with periodic "full" rsync checksum runs, is effectively a failsafe way of ensuing a good backup.
For our less critical systems, this plus "spot checking" by regularly going in and looking at "what did this file look like a few weeks ago" (something we commonly use backups for), has proven pretty effective while also being low work.
For critical systems, definitely do test recoveries. Our database server, for example, every week recovers the production database into our staging and dev environments, so backup problems tend to get noticed pretty quickly.
Don't you have commit logs for this??
It's very powerful having just a few sentences I can read about what was going on specifically on a given day.
Maybe it makes more sense to have a box per week instead of per day. Or even per month!
At least in my own life I've noticed that focusing on daily output tends to be demoralizing, whereas if I look back over the months I am often amazed by what has come out of me.
Sounds like the weekly report most of my bosses have demanded.
I've actually had good conversations with nervous junior devs to help them see the value of their contributions this way. There's a lot less reason to stress out if you're working steadily and see that things are going according to plan.
I know devs can be focused on the literal tasks at hand, but the "10k ft view" is not just a cheesy thing people say and it should not be ignored. It gives perspective.
I'm curious about a few things:
1. How do you handle things that carry over multiple days? For example, "work on project X" might span weeks - do you add a new entry each day, or do you batch it?
2. Do you track time estimates or actual time spent? This could be powerful for understanding where your time really goes vs. where you think it goes.
3. What's your retention/archival strategy? 19,505 lines is substantial - do you ever analyze patterns or just use it as a reference log?
4. Have you noticed any behavior changes from keeping this list? Does it make you more or less productive, or just more aware?
5. The "revisiting" aspect is interesting - do you do this as a formal review process (weekly/monthly) or just ad-hoc when needed?
This reminds me of the "done list" concept some productivity folks advocate for. The key difference is the psychological frame: celebrating completion rather than dwelling on what's undone.
Ah I thought (and hoped) it was gonna be a list of epiphanies, interesting learnings, new sweetness. You know… taDA!
Giving yourself credit for what you've done is fine, but if it comes from a feeling of insufficiency, then at best it's symptom relief that helps you avoid the underlying issue.
Worse, by trying to argue, the loop strengthens. It's inside your brain, it's a cognitive behaviour, apparently somehow you learned it as an important message to remind yourself of. Arguing back that you did enough isn't "hearing the important message" so the message gets more insistent, louder - HEY! LISTEN! you DID NOT do enough! SCUM! DO MORE!
The cognitive behaviour to change is the judging, not the response to the judging. Where did I learn to beat myself up about productivity with that addict's loop? Why am I holding on to it when it hurts and makes me feel bad? What desirable behaviour or values is it trying to achieve that makes me unable to drop it? How can I uphold the same values and encourage the same positive behaviours in a positive-reinforcement way instead of a negative-reinforcement way so I can let go of that and feel less shitty?
> "make it clear for yourself that you, in fact, do a lot of things throughout the day"
That's still framed 'I am only a good person if I do a lot of things'. It's you who controls your definition of a good person. You who holds the definition so high that you feel you don't live up to it. You who creates the bad feelings when you judge that you don't live up to the definition you control. Which is a sitcom farce of a way to live. The missing bit is that you didn't consciously set it, you accidentally learned it from childhood or society or religion or osmosis, and don't know that you can change it; it feels immutable and obviously correct.[1]
Either way it's the same chore of making of your bed, but in one multiverse you feel negatively compelled to do it, you feel bad while doing it and dreadful if you miss it. In another multiverse you choose to do it, feel good while doing it, and if you miss it that's fine. In one multiverse you're imagining future-you having a nice bed to climb into tonight so you're feeling mild positive emotions (satisfied, pleased, helpful, kind, useful). And if you miss doing it then future-you can forgive you because it's not a big deal and you're feeling neutral. In another multiverse you do it while imagining your tyrant grandmother scowling at you. However much effort you put into making the bed, it's never enough. If you imagine missing it, she's screaming at you-aged-6 about how you're the laziest child she's ever known and you'll end up homeless and destitute, an embarassment to her, a disgrace to your family, and she's going to smack some obedience into you[2]. So you do it while feeling mild to strong negative emotions (anxious, afraid, bad, scared, shaking, panicky). And you're probably aware as an adult how unfair this is so add in some (angry, resentful, unfairly treated, bitter) and if you can't easily get away from it some (frustration, contempt of yourself, envy of/inferior to people who don't live like this). There's no way to win in this multiverse - there's no way to get positive emotions. The best case is doing it promptly and thoroughly and trying to minimize the negative emotions by whirlwinding through and not thinking about it.
You can't list all the days of your life that you made your bed and show them to imaginary-tyrant-grandma hoping she will approve and you can feel good forever. She isn't real, she's a "10 SCOWL; 20 GOTO 10" loop stuck in your head. That mocking image of her will never be proud of you, never be satisfied. Nor can you try to say "she might not be happy but I can be happy about all the times I did this" because she's in your head so that you can't be happy and because that unhappiness drives you to put more effort in, which is the behaviour she wanted to instill. Reinforced by the nagging almost sub-conscious image of lying in a ditch with your mother disowning you, which gets stronger the more you try to be happy, and weaker every time you are scared and work harder.
The tyrant-grandma-loop is the cognitive behaviour that needs a mechanic, and all the related lifetime of images/ideas/behaviours that are feeding into it, or fed by it. Back to the article, after an entire year of tada-list, the author writes "forces you to have an accomplishment each day so you can write it down, and this added stress to my day". Hmm.
[1] (Then you think that if someone says 'you can change it', they must be saying 'it is easy to change'. Then you either feel bad that you haven't succeeded at something easy so you must be stupid, or you dismiss them by saying "thanks I'm cured" because you "tried" ignoring it and that didn't work so they must be stupid)
[2] Which, sadly, she probably felt was absolutely true, handed down from her mother or father, a torment she also lived under her whole life.
Sadly, at this point I would not even call it a challenge, but I would consider it more a pastime.
Sure, but we're talking about a "tada list" here.
Would you write about relaxing and meditation on __your__ tada list?
"Today I meditated through drawing" is an accomplishment to me worth my personal tada list. Might not be for everyone though, I can understand that.
Someone else was making a good point that a daily tada list might be unnecessary pressure and a weekly one feels more balanced.
To add more color though, I personally would expect this to compound into an overall tada list similar to OP. At the end of the year I could amount to a lot of drawings and notice improvements over time. But again, AI has nothing to do with it.
If we give up on personal accomplishments because "AI can do it" we would go nowhere. But that's my 2c.
It’s all a matter of perspective and personal goals, no?
I wouldn't because I would just use libgmp or sympy. And I would certainly not write about it on my "tada list" (if I had one).
Anyway, that's how you should read that comment.
But that is not true of painting. Painting requires choosing a subject (for its subjective qualities) and then translating what you _want_ to capture about that subject and how you want to represent it in paint on some medium. You will also be applying a theory of mind and perception about the audience of the painting since you probably want it to appeal to them. All of these choices and the skill to combine them into a painting that achieves what you want is vastly more challenging than multiplication.
Multiplication is akin to paint by numbers.
EDIT: it actually strikes me that this conversation gets to the crux of why AI art is so polarizing. It depends whether you view art predominantly as being about the thing that is created or the process of creation.