Apropos SRS and needing a second list: I’m currently experimenting with using Anki as a to-do tool. (Every task becomes a card, I “learn” the deck, and for each task get the choice of Again/Hard/Good/Easy with listed intervals, e.g. <15min, 1d, 6d, 27d. If I want to see the task again quickly (Again/Hard), I have to spend at least 5 minutes on it before clicking the button. Otherwise, it’s ok to bury it by clicking ‘Easy’ on it.)
This deals nicely with “nice-to-haves” that I don’t want to kill yet. Whenever they come up, I just send them away to next month/quarter/year/… - that way, I don’t ever have to make the hard decision to kill the idea, I could always change my mind about this later, because I know that I will be reminded eventually. These “non-tasks” are also eating a fraction of the mental capacity that they’d otherwise require, because (a) I don’t get a growing list of “things that would be nice to do eventually” that I’d have to manually comb through (instead every couple of days there will be 1 or 2 of them mixed in with the review), and (b) I know that they’ll pop back up eventually, so I don’t have to worry about keeping track of them or finding them again if I ever change my mind. (To a lesser degree, it also forces me to start early on tasks due in several months, to keep the interval growth in check.)
The only problem I had so far was tasks that are inactionable right now (e.g. taking out the trash at 5am, because noisy) needed to be ‘skipped’ and reviewed later, leading to “ugh not in the mood right now” skips of actually actionable tasks, leading to less stuff getting done.
FVP looks like it might fix this. So for the month of December I’ll be running the following modified algorithm:
Go through the list of tasks in Anki, for each either do it right away or put it on the (paper) list, or delegate it to future-me (i.e. pick the long interval Good/Easy option).
Do FVP on the paper list.
3-strikes rule for “list leftovers”: If I say I do it but don’t get around to it, the counter increases. Once it hits three, I must “delegate to future me”. (Counter resets whenever I explicitly declare not to work on it, not sure yet if it should also reduce for streaks… For the experiment, I’ll go with yes and 3-days streaks for removing one mark.)
Apropos SRS and needing a second list: I’m currently experimenting with using Anki as a to-do tool. (Every task becomes a card, I “learn” the deck, and for each task get the choice of Again/Hard/Good/Easy with listed intervals, e.g. <15min, 1d, 6d, 27d. If I want to see the task again quickly (Again/Hard), I have to spend at least 5 minutes on it before clicking the button. Otherwise, it’s ok to bury it by clicking ‘Easy’ on it.)
This deals nicely with “nice-to-haves” that I don’t want to kill yet. Whenever they come up, I just send them away to next month/quarter/year/… - that way, I don’t ever have to make the hard decision to kill the idea, I could always change my mind about this later, because I know that I will be reminded eventually. These “non-tasks” are also eating a fraction of the mental capacity that they’d otherwise require, because (a) I don’t get a growing list of “things that would be nice to do eventually” that I’d have to manually comb through (instead every couple of days there will be 1 or 2 of them mixed in with the review), and (b) I know that they’ll pop back up eventually, so I don’t have to worry about keeping track of them or finding them again if I ever change my mind. (To a lesser degree, it also forces me to start early on tasks due in several months, to keep the interval growth in check.)
The only problem I had so far was tasks that are inactionable right now (e.g. taking out the trash at 5am, because noisy) needed to be ‘skipped’ and reviewed later, leading to “ugh not in the mood right now” skips of actually actionable tasks, leading to less stuff getting done.
FVP looks like it might fix this. So for the month of December I’ll be running the following modified algorithm:
Go through the list of tasks in Anki, for each either do it right away or put it on the (paper) list, or delegate it to future-me (i.e. pick the long interval Good/Easy option).
Do FVP on the paper list.
3-strikes rule for “list leftovers”: If I say I do it but don’t get around to it, the counter increases. Once it hits three, I must “delegate to future me”. (Counter resets whenever I explicitly declare not to work on it, not sure yet if it should also reduce for streaks… For the experiment, I’ll go with yes and 3-days streaks for removing one mark.)
Let’s see how long I’ll stick to this.