project: Projects that are not in flight.Examples: write impulse followup blog post, document disaster recovery testing procedure, prepare slide show for shitposting Zoom I use ongoing to think through the next few steps of a project, and those steps are organized in the same way as the stack. I try to keep this limited to 2, and I’ll pull tasks from ongoing into the stack when I have time. ongoing: BIGGER projects that are currently in flight.Examples: read RFC that Tom sent, connect anti-tip kit to bookshelf, watch latest Philosophytube video blue: (called “blue” for historical reasons) Tasks that are ready to start, which do require sustained focus, and which will probably take longer than 30 minutes.Examples: check whether there's a better time for that weekly meeting, fix dead link on website, read that Stephen Malkmus interview I saw pink: (called “pink” for historical reasons) Tasks that are ready to start, which don’t demand sustained focus, and which can probably be done in under 15 minutes.Here’s a snapshot of the buckets I’m currently using: The stack is a text file in a Git repository, and I also maintain some buckets as auxiliary text files. To keep track of things I want to follow up on later: write widget functionĪnd I use it in many other ways that are less well defined but no less intuitive. To break down a task into pieces and make it more manageable and help keep track of where I am: wire clipper As a to-do list when I’m puttering around the house: dishes I’ve been using Impulse for a whole bunch of purposes. There is only one thing to do: the line at the top of the stack. When I’m working, I never need to worry about how my current task fits into the big picture, or whether I’ve skipped a step, or whether there’s something more valuable I could be doing instead. Here’s another way to look at it: with Impulse, the process of choosing what to do is decoupled from the process of doing it.
I can just bang away at the thing on top, abiding in faith that if I simply spend time doing things, things will get done. I don’t have to worry so much about whether everything important is on the list, or whether it’s in the right order. That’s always the thing I’m currently doing, no matter what. With Impulse, the focus is always on the top line. It’s exhausting and it doesn’t get me anywhere. Which means I don’t have time to… and so on. Should I cut some things? Which things are most important? Which things are most urgent? Oh shoot, I also need to get groceries today. Should I tidy up my desk today? Should I clean the bathroom? Should I put my DuoLingo on here? Should I add a task to reply to that email from my Dad? Should I add breaks? Now the list is way too long to get done before lunch. If I let myself, I’ll sit there for an hour just silently panicking about what should be on the list. I get paralyzed thinking about all the possible activities I could potentially do that might be valuable. You can relax.įor me, it’s quite the opposite. There are many who find this comforting! The list represents a finite sequence of discrete steps, and once you’ve gone through all the steps, you’re done. Making a to-do list involves writing down all the things you need to do, and committing to do all of them. The top line is always the thing I’m currently working on.Īt first, I thought Impulse was just a to-do list flipped upside down.A task can have child tasks, which appear above the parent task and indented.My practices are in rapid flux at the moment, but the core workflow has more or less solidified to the following: Since that post, I’ve been using Impulse more seriously. Since I need a name for it, I’ve been calling it Impulse. It’s inspired by the call stack, but it presupposes no knowledge of computer science. Last week I wrote about a system I’ve been using to manage my attention.
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