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Ask HN: What do you use to track your tasks and accomplishments at work?

by 600frogs on 5/12/21, 8:54 AM with 29 comments

• by 100011_100001 on 5/12/21, 12:42 PM

  I like low tech, but I also like agility.

  Every morning I write a list of 5 things I want to accomplish in an index card. Any appointments I have are also written down. This allows me to easily figure out what I need to and what I have to do.

  5 is a good number of tasks for me as long as some tasks take 30 minutes or less. This is not only work tasks, but life tasks as well, it's kind of what I feel I need to accomplish today.

  Then I have a day.md file open for work. I prefer markdown because it's easy to render anywhere, email, wiki pages, gitlab etc. My day.md is a single file that expands for a year. Each year I start a new one.

  day.md has all my meeting notes and all work projects worked on. The reason why I prefer an electronic document for this is speed. It's fast to write things in, it's a single place so I don't have to figure out where I put my notes or whatever. Most importantly being a file I can search for things, re-arrange projects, current project being worked on is always on top.

  This helps with my planning as well. I feel that a lot of times as a dev we tend to get overwhelmed with all the things we have to do to solve a project. So I break things down, usually it starts abstract and as I get a better understanding it becomes more in depth.

  My index card gets ripped up at the end of the day. It makes me feel good for completing all the tasks on it. :)

• by codingdave on 5/12/21, 10:48 AM

  I don't use anything separate from what we use for tracking the dev work. In the current job, Jira. I can report on what I did at the end of the year (for performance reviews) by querying the data, and check old release notes for a delivered feature list.

  Outside of that, I have no need for a permanent list of my "done" items. I'm not saying it is a bad idea, I'm just not sure what goal is behind it. I'm genuinely curious why one would keep such a thing?

• by guybert on 5/12/21, 9:21 AM

  I like trello a lot for tasks but I'm not using a paid plan so nothing fancy like automatic tasks or integrations but it does the work. It must be useful in team, as sharing txt docs is not practical. I was sending myself emails of things to do in the past

• by graderjs on 5/12/21, 9:14 AM

  Textfiles, undated. Normally 1 master todo list, and 1 DONE file. Every time I check an item off, I go through the following ritual: put DONE before the todo item. Save the file. Cut that todo item out and put it in the DONE file. Save both files. It's a great feeling. This is my way of celebrating each win. For larger wins, and major todos I'll do some other form of celebrating.

  I'll also reorganize and reorder the todo list as priorities change. I indent sub todos under their logical parent task.

  Sometimes I'll break whole sections of todos out into a smaller %task_name%.todo file when they're no longer critical and can be somehow grouped together.

• by BjoernKW on 5/12/21, 1:00 PM

  Why do you want track your tasks and accomplishments? Do you do this for yourself or for somebody else (e.g. a manager)?

  How do you measure accomplishments and results? Those often are different from the tasks required to achieve them.

  I use Remember the Milk for keeping track of personal todos that need to be done by a specific date. When I collaborate with others, it's whatever tool fits the work and the workflow. This could mean GitHub Issues, Jira, or Trello, for example.

  Otherwise, I use Bear for noting down particular achievements I consider, well, noteworthy.

• by atsaloli on 5/12/21, 12:58 PM

  > Currently I'm using one text doc per day, titled with the date.

  Same! In addition, twice a month I go through the daily logs and pull out highlights of accomplishments. Those "highlights" I use to write my self-evaluation during my performance review (to list what I accomplished since the last review).

• by 2rsf on 5/12/21, 9:36 AM

  Onenote, I use a somewhat similar process but with Onenote it is easier to access a specific section, search is great, you can use better basic formatting and you can add and link to notes from your TODO

• by dave_sid on 5/12/21, 12:35 PM

  Pen and pad of paper

• by abrocks on 5/13/21, 6:40 AM

  For me personality matters a lot. I initially tried to adjust to multiple tools now I am adjusting tools to my personality.

  *Mental shift*:

  1. I shifted from deterministic to probabilistic. Being deterministic meant I had to do these tasks. If I didn't, I felt bad about it. Being probabilistic meant that there is a high chance that I would do these tasks but if I didn't that's okay. Probability doesn't account for outliers.

  2. I started using my tool as more of a *reminder* as compared to a *guide*. My world is too chaotic sometimes, as I have to attend online zoom meetings, solve bugs and guide junior developers etc. My priorities would change from morning till evening. So, I decided not let a rigid framework control me but let the tool remind me that hey there is a task you jotted down to work on - do you have time to work on it?. I also realized that some tasks dry up or become irrelevant with time as universe take care of themselves.

  3. I started planning my weeks before my days. I realized that at a macro level, I can't control my day but I can control my week. So, I make a priority list of what to be achieved at end of this week(abstract goals). Each week is a different page or note in my tool. I do reflective thinking after week end as on what I was able to achieve, what new things came on my plate, what came in between etc. This helped me in marking down my accomplishments.

  4. I plan on day level as well but I don't keep admiring my tracker. I realized that after thinking through what tasks need to be done in the morning after looking at my tool planner, I can continue working on them. I mark ticks at the end of day.

  5. I jot down bugs solved or programming or business wisdom achieved in the entire day in my notes as well. This helps me to recall easily in case someone asked me - what did you do on that day or week.

  *Framework*:

  1. After a lot of trial and error, I ended up with a modified version of Eisenhower matrix. It generally consists of four quadrants:

      - Urgent and Important
      - Urgent but not Important
      - Not Urgent but Important
      - Not Urgent Not Important
  

  2. However, I ended up modifying it. I replaced word Important with impactful and added subcategories of simple, medium and hard under each quadrant as follows:

      - Urgent and Impactful
        - Simple
        - Medium
        - Hard

  3. I keep different todo list for different projects and assign priority to projects. I ask myself the following: If someone put a gun on my head and ask me to choose one project priority-wise which one would I choose. Then, choose the second project and on. Of course, I prioritize Urgent and Impactful ones across all projects.

  *Choice of tool*:

  1. I used google calendar, keep, one note etc. Now, I have finally settled on Evernote. Sometimes, I get urges to switch to Notion or Trello as well but Evernote is working for me now.

  PS: I derive a lot of inspiration from *My Effectiveness* app. You can have a look at it as well: <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andtek.sev...>