Getting to an Empty To-Do List

I’ve finally cracked the code (I’ve never been good at studying).
I believe there was a brief period of time in middle school when I was prepping for the SATs and then the SHSATs when I actually set something of a time table for myself. Before then, it was always my parents nagging me to study or teachers at school prepping us for in-school exams and standardized exams, always repeating material in somewhat of a pattern.
I honestly can’t believe it’s taken me this long to figure it out (I think it’s the s/fresh London air setting my thoughts straight), but all those years of shunning ‘study tips’ seminars and ‘smart study techniques’ have all been so so foolish.
This is mainly for anyone who was like me and found themselves suddenly struggling to do well on exams in high school or college — depending on when you made the leap from a general educational institution to a more targeted one, ie magnet schools or technical universities.
I don’t exactly know how I managed to get through a specialized high school now that I think about it, but I’m sure glad my cramming skills were good enough to get me somewhat decent grades. At any rate, I’ll go over my current study/organization methods (nothing compared to studygrams, but a system that has made me happy) and some realizations that I’ve had over time.
If you’re more interested in my takeaways from the examen of my habits, feel free to skip to the end of the post.
Google Calendar
I use this for organizing classes, social events, physical activities (climbing, pole, fitness classes), interviews, flights/buses, birthdays, and payment deadlines. Basically, it’s for set events that may conflict with each other, and I use my calendar pretty often to make sure that I’m not scheduling a phone call that overlaps with something I’ve already committed to (this is especially helpful for converting between time zones, which I’ve had to do quite often this term).
It isn’t the best method, and I’m still trying to figure out how to improve. I currently color code my events and use a different calendar if I’m sharing specific events with other people (i.e. my travel calendar if people need to know where I’ll be a certain weekend). I’ve heard of some people using Calendly, but having to schedule around free time, lunch, and dinner time is not yet something I think I’m ready to do.
Evernote
I started life-logging freshman year of college and it’s been a life saver ever since (I had a friend consult me for the name of someone at a club meeting and Evernote saved the day). It started off as me actually life-blogging, but then I started to record things that I felt were too personal to share to the wider world, so I mostly keep my Evernote to myself.
I’ll admit, it’s somewhat awkward when I’m recording notes from a talk or from a particular conversation, for instance, but I know that journalists do this all the time and figure out various ways to make it not awkward. I have a fairly bad memory for names in particular, so I’ll usually try to record down the names of people I’ve met that day to help recall later.
I also usually write down what I’ve eaten, major events that have occurred, and ideas for future articles or things to research throughout the day. It serves as a bit of the scratch part of a bullet journal, although I’ve found that carrying a journal around is a bit burdensome and risky (I’ve lost bullet journals in the past and it’s always a pain to recover).
I’ve started getting more and more informal with my life-logging as time has gone on, and now it’s mostly just for me to record down memories I want to remember later on. It is neat to be able to go to a specific date and recall most of the major events of that date, though.
Edit: In retrospect, I actually have been doing this for much longer. I started writing down what happened to me every day of every summer starting with kindergarten, when I received my first green notebook. I have a stack of notebooks in my room dating back to 2004 where I wrote about the lunch I had, when my cousins visited, and other mundane events. I think doing some form of data analysis of my past writings might be interesting, but I’m a bit afraid of what I’ll find.
OneNote
I wasn’t actually a fan of OneNote until this year, but a friend of mine who has been using the app to take notes for classes since high school got me interested in learning more. I’ve mostly used it for lecture notes, and it’s gotten me to be more conscious of the notes I take in class.
In high school, many of my friends prided themselves with never needing to take notes, but that only made it easier for knowledge from lectures to dissipate into nothingness. MIT classes occasionally have past lectures or notes posted online, but you still don’t get the specific comments made by professors. Imperial classes have many of the lectures recorded, which makes it possible to refer back to them, but I’ve found that in the process of doing so, I’m wasting so many hours rewatching content I’ve already watched because I missed a specific comment.
Actually taking care to structure my notes in a way that they’re useful to me later on is something I’m actively working on. It helps that OneNote has different colors for pens, which makes for very pretty notetaking without having to worry about different color pens.
Trello
I only started using Trello this year, mainly because I had a really good time using JIRA this summer. I had previously used Phabricator, but I found the process of understanding the bigger picture and knowing what to do every day so helpful for estimating how long a project would take.
I didn’t quite appreciate estimating tickets then as I do now — actually knowing that you can spend six hours a day on a task and that you’ll finish it in four days, for instance, is incredibly helpful. It means that when you spend less time, you’ve improved (if you’re at the point where you’re able to accurately estimate tickets).
At any rate, I brushed off my dusty old account and set up several new boards. I currently have one board for logistics and one for media.
I use the media board to track films, novels, non-fiction books, documentaries, shows, classes, web comics, and other media I want to check out. I don’t do as good a job of tracking every single one I consume, but I’ve been getting better. It is nice for keeping track of recommendations for books to read or shows to see, and is nice to consult whenever I’m bored or need some titles. I’m still working on sorting the priority for new media I add to the board, so it’s not yet a perfect system.
I use my logistics board for my chores list (items I need to get done for classes, clubs, competitions I’m participating in, job applications, physical activities, trips, side projects, or personal learning). I also have a planning list (mostly for upcoming interviews or trips), a bucket list, and a more unspecified random ideas list (this is more of a bucket where things get tossed in and never retrieved, but I never like abandoning random ideas). I also have a miscellaneous list for keep track of things like how many digits of pi I know (not many), which mountains I’ve been on or under, states I’ve been to, and heritage dishes I’ve cooked (trying to work my way up to Chinese banquet steamed fish).
Currently, I organize my chores by month. At the end of the day, I’ll schedule chores from the current month or else move them to the random ideas bucket. Sublists that are completely finished get labeled green (I don’t list deleting lists).
Edit: Similar to the Evernote situation, I used to keep a Hello Kitty notebook with a book review for every book I read since ~3rd grade. I stopped around 9th grade, which is a shame, although I think my reading rate dramatically plummeted around then as well. It wasn’t until this summer, when I was taking trains around Southeast Asia, that I finally found the time to properly pick up reading as a hobby again.
Goodreads
Ever since I picked up reading again this summer, I started using Goodreads to keep track of my current books and books I’ve read in the past. It’s mostly just for the titles, since my disastrous memory occasionally recalls a specific plot but not the title. It’s fun trying to discern whether or not the plot was my own creation or that of a well-known author.
Chrome Bookmarks
I currently have a folder for the tools I use (Overleaf, internal department websites, Linux copypasta) and class links for the term. I also have folders for links I need for work and links to news sites (to keep me on my toes).
On the general bookmarks bar, I have links to Google Calendar, Gmail, Trello, Mastodon, Discord, OneTab (I like to have way too many tabs open), my spreadsheet for internship applications in 2020, my spreadsheet for grants applied in 2020, Evernote, Moira (for MIT mailing lists), Pinterest (for art inspiration since I’m weaning myself off Instagram), an Amazon Prime link for my old Chinese School, and other links as necessary. I like to keep my bookmarks minimalist, so I usually just have the logo unless the site has no logo.
At the moment, I also have a link to NSA Codebreakers (I will usually switch this up depending on what competition is currently going on).
Lastpass, 1Password
This is branching out a bit from my productivity theme, but I really do recommend a password manager for everyone. It’s horrible to keep passwords written down somewhere. Password managers let you keep just one password in your head since you can copy and paste all the rest whenever you need. There are some issues with the app versions in terms of user experience, but it’s still so much safer for your privacy and security to keep your passwords secure.
You can also relieve yourself of needing to set the same password for all of your sites because you don’t need to have a good memory to keep dozens of passwords anymore.
Day-to-Day Calendar
I currently use a physical calendar for this, but I may convert this to a Google Calendar if it becomes too troublesome. I use this calendar for scheduling what I’ll do each day. By knowing what responsibilities I have, I can see if I can fit in an extra chore on a given day, or whether I should move some chores around of lower priority.
It also lets me take items off my to-do list on Trello and empty them out a lot faster. I know they’ll get done, and if they don’t, I’ll just move the item to another day on the same calendar.
Realizations
I never actually planned out anything before this term. I think it’s a combination of my anxiety about exams suddenly spiking and the amount of planning I’ve had to do for my various bus trips across Europe the past weekends that’s gotten me to realize the benefits of planning ahead for studying and projects.
I’m used to having a never-ending to-do list and having no idea what to tackle. Not only do I feel unmotivated by the minuscule difference I make each day, but I spend so many wasted minutes reading the to-do list over and over again. Often, it’s filled with tasks of varying priorities, from things to buy to grants to apply to.
My cousin visited last weekend and I mentioned how I’d been meaning to buy a knife sharpener since my first week in London. She was incredulous about why I had taken over a month, and how I had still not acquired one. I realized that it was because I never specifically scheduled a time to buy the sharpener, and so it was just constantly on my mind and never an actionable.
There’s a good amount of literature (and articles on the web) related to how the invisible workload of having things constantly on your mind can be physically harrowing. As such, it’s a good idea to never have a to-do list that spans beyond the day. It should at least be a list of a different name — perhaps a one-day list.
I’m now able to add things to my to-do list and schedule them out to specific days based on my Day-to-Day Calendar. I no longer have to check my to-do list except to add more items or when a new month has turned and it’s time to schedule some more items onto my calendar. Plus, if I actually finish all of the chores for the day, that just means more free time.
If you’re wondering, this post is currently being written in my free time. It’s quite nice to know that for a brief period of time you truly have no responsibilities.
