“I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business.” – Ben Franklin
Growing up in Palo Alto, most kids attended one of a dozen neighborhood elementary schools. But parents also had the option of sending their kids to two ‘choice’ elementary schools.
One, Hoover, was extremely structured and disciplined; if the class was doing math, everyone was open to the same page in the same book working on the same problem at the same time.
The other, Ohlone, was the complete opposite. No tests, no grades, no homework; kids learned in mixed-grade classes, called teachers by their first names, and met in small seminar groups with the teacher for part of the day while self-supervising project and problem set work the rest of the day.
I went to Ohlone.
As a result, by the time I headed off to Yale, I still couldn’t place all fifty states on a map. (Seriously.) But I had mastered the kind of learning I’d be doing at Yale, and the kind of work I’d be doing thereafter running companies.
As the old saw goes, I really did learn everything I needed to know in kindergarden.
For years and years, I managed all of my tasks, projects, goals and ideas using a handful of text files that I wrangled in the text editor BBEdit. It was nerdy and time-consuming, but also completely bespoke; the approach fit my workflow, and evolved over time as my working style did, too.
Along the way, I briefly tried out pretty much every task management software that existed. Some, like The Hit List or Omnifocus, I even stuck with for a couple of weeks. But, inevitably, I’d end up chafing under a program’s structure, or run into problems with its stability and data security, and return to my free-form text.
About six months ago, for reasons I can no longer recall, I decided to test out the online task management program Todoist. An extremely fast and fluid web app, it also boasted polished iPhone and iPad versions. So I dumped in my text files, and started using it. And then I kept using it. And using it. Two months in, I reverted to my text approach; after an hour, I started to feel that it was text, not Todoist, that fell short in comparison.
Six months later, I still use Todoist all day, ever day. If you haven’t tried it out, you should. (And sign up for the trial of the premium features; they make the app vastly more powerful, and are certainly worth the the $0.08 a day they cost if you decide to stick with it.)
Courtesy of my parents, a birthday look back at where it all began:
As Jess points out, while I don’t yet look like myself at a day old, I do by a year; by a year and a half, I’m apparently already more or the less the guy I am today.
Last day of 34.
As a birthday gift to myself, I’m dropping my worst habit: bullshitting / lying / ‘selling’ / whatever. It’s gotten me into trouble in the past, and I’m sick of it. I’m calling a do-over, quitting it cold turkey, and starting 35 fresh. Wish me luck.
As Samuel Butler once observed, “life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”
“Barn’s burnt down –
Now
I can see the moon.”
– Masahide