To-dos

I belong to the older generation of people who still use a notepad to write down their action items (To-do lists) and then strike the items out once they are done. I tried a lot of web-based and mobile-based alternatives, but none can give me the satisfaction (or the pleasure) of physically striking out an item off the list once it is done.

Now, most of my weekends start with me writing down a huge-list of action items for the weekend and then when Sunday night comes, more than half of them are not done (there is a reason why I call myself the God of procrastination). Maybe that’s what makes me grumpy on Sunday nights.

Long time ago I had read this story of an old woman, who sits down to write a small little mail (yeah postal mail) to her grandson, and ends up taking the entire day cause that’s the only thing that she had planned for the day. The moral of the story was – work expands to take over all the time that you have.

However, I generally face a different ordeal. Small and easy things on my list I end up doing. The boring difficult ones keep getting postponed till I hit a day on which I have no option but to do them.

This weekend however was a surprisingly satisfying one. I ended up almost finishing my entire To-do list (yeah the most difficult item on the list was done from 2300 to 0130 on the Sunday night!). Ha, the sweet smell of success. Thought I put up a blog post to celebrate this achievement.

Anyway, I am toying with following the pomodoro technique of time management. Let’s see how it goes.