iDoneThis and My Favourite Things

On Getting Things Done

Inspired by Caty Kobe’s post “ The Done List”.

The Story

For the past 19 months I've been on a quest for the perfect productivity system; One App to rule them all.

In January 2012 I faced a never ending cascade of emails and tasks. How bad was it? I felt anxious whenever I sat down in front of a computer — it was that bad. In my quest since I've used:

  1. A word doc (!)
  2. Google calendar
  3. Google tasks
  4. Remember The Milk
  5. Wunderkit
  6. Do.com
  7. Asana
  8. Trello
  9. Astrid tasks
  10. Wunderlist
  11. Workflowy (intriguing)
  12. Plain old sticky notes
  13. And others since forgotten

Fortunately I happened upon iDoneThis. For group productivity it’s easy to see how awesome it is. I couldn't see how it could work in one’s personal life, but it does.

I've built my current system on the 2 principles below and am still tinkering, experimenting, and improving it. Try it out and let me know what you think.

The Principles

Principle 1: Making progress feels good. The best way to build confidence in our progress and achieve our goals is to review our previous successes. That’s the great thing about iDoneThis. Basically “Done lists” work better psychologically than to-do lists.

Principle 2: What you track, you can measure, what you measure you can control. Credits to my Managerial Accounting professor, Abbe for teaching me this. For tracking I use 2 apps that run in background:

The System

  1. Plan: Wunderlist (testing the “Bullet Journal”)
  2. Execute: With body and mind
  3. Review: iDoneThis
  • Track: ManicTime
  • Measure: Rescuetime
  • And adjust

One Other Thing

As Captain and Commander of our lives we use maps to direct us through our lives. As Commander we decide upon a destination and set forth on our journey. As Captain we steer our ship to the many ports on our journey. It’s important to be reminded of our final destination — why we set sail in the first place.

I've used FutureMe a few times and the emails always arrive at a serendipitous time, at the time I needed to hear what I wrote the most.

Future considerations

I’m still not done experimenting and I’m currently testing a paper system. When I’m done you’ll be the first to hear about it. First and foremost I’m interested in what you think.

  1. Have you used productivity apps, calendars and to-do lists?
  2. Have you found shortcomings or completeness in what you’re using?
  3. What do you think makes the ultimate system, calendar, or to-do list?

Sean Foo

Photo by iDoneThis

Email me when Sean Foo publishes or recommends stories