"Menu" productivity game

[shanaqui]

I mentioned in the gratitude thread that I figured out a way to get stuff done today that worked well for me, and let me satisfy my whims, and @dreev was interested so I guess I’ll write it up! I make no promises it’ll work for anyone else, but it prodded me to do a surprising amount and variety of stuff today.

I called it a “menu” because the first step was to write a list of things it’d be good to do today, a mix of stuff I needed to do and fun things. I did it in a thread in a Discord I’m in for productivity, and I made each separate item a separate message so I could use emoji reacts on it later.

The first step was to come up with the tasks. I deliberately included a lot of chill fun-time things since it was a weekend list; I’m not sure it’d work so well for a day when there’s specific stuff I have to make a certain amount of progress on. So here’s an example:

#1: Spend 10 minutes on Beeminder goals
#2: Spend 10 minutes commenting on blogs
#3: Spend 10 minutes on getting stuff ready for my trip
#4: Play a dungeon in FFXIV
#5: Spend 10 minutes working on my gatherer gear in FFXIV
#6: Play a level of Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop
#7: Read a chapter

It was a bit longer than that, but you get the gist. I numbered them as well so that if I couldn’t pick something to do, I could ask the RNG to pick.

Then I picked a thing based on my whim. Everything was deliberately bitesize, so it felt easy to go spend 10 minutes on travel stuff because it was only 10 minutes… and then if the task took longer, as it often did, I could mark it off twice! Once I’d done a task for whatever time limit was set, I added a react to it in Discord. I used the number reacts, , so it ended up looking like this.

That tells me what I’ve spent my time on today and gave me a way to check at a glance if there was anything I’d neglected.

And that’s it! I’ve no idea how useful it’ll be to anyone else, but today I “touched” all my Beeminder goals, finally sorted out my gatherer gear in FFXIV, finished a book and a manga, sorted out decanting almost everything I wanted to decant for my toiletries bag, invoiced my clients, did tax paperwork, and a bunch of other things, so it worked well for me!

I think there are two things that added to the satisfaction:

1. It was whim-based, rather than going from item to item in a list and feeling like I had to cross everything out or do things in order or prioritise certain things.
2. It was varied, so it felt like a long and full day, thus quite satisfying.

[lanthala]

I actually do something similar but on paper when I’m feeling a bit stuck: I made a to-do list of things I want to get done that day (like you, I try to include at least a few fun things), and then roll a die every time it’s time to make a decision. I don’t have to finish the item I land on, just make progress, then I can cross it off (and rewrite it at the bottom if it’s not done). It lets me do a bunch of different things, and I get the accomplishment of seeing a nice long list of things I’ve checked off at the end of the day. It works so well that my 6 year old also does it when she’s having a hard time getting things done

[dreev]

Ah, lovely! This has me thinking more about @alltom’s brilliant Todournament that lets you dump in a list of todos (perhaps from GitHub Issues) and then let more appealing / more urgent things bubble up by offering you heads-up comparisons.

[bee]

Oh yeah, I 100% relate. I like the use of the discord list + emoji reacts! That might work well for me on a work day.

I will often make a weekend list of “stuff I might like to do today”. It’s usually heavy on the fun stuff, with only a handful, if any, “must do” type things. Then I’ll use any of: whim, dot list (Mark Forster), or a random roll, to decide what to do. I also love the “do a little bit on this task” thing as a way to kind of trick or prod myself into things that are less pleasant. Usually when I do this it is a list on physical paper and I cross the thing off and add it back to the bottom of the list if there’s more to be done on the task. Which makes for a beautifully satisfying list at the end of the day.

I’ve definitely also used this with the kids (back when they wanted to do things with me on weekends – teenagers ).

This Saturday I made a list that looked like this:

1. fatebook integration
2. home depot / ikea
3. curtains
4. slippers
5. stretching
6. dressers
7. cat door
8. scones
9. long-ass walk
10. copic tut?
11. hang art
12. rem xmas
13. rugs
14. goodwill

I spent some time with about half of them.

[shanaqui]

The emoji reacts can be a really fun way to jazz it up. I have used Discord a lot for productivity stuff because I’ve been in accountability groups there lo these many years (more years than I’d like to admit, to be honest). So we’ve made use of reacts in a lot of different ways. Another one is good for when I have a short attention span but need to focus on a few things, e.g.:

15 minutes work on email
read a chapter of a book
complete one physio exercise
15 minutes cleaning tasks
do a dungeon in FFXIV
hydrate

(I like using emoji to make it easier to see at a glance what’s next, also just for fun.)

Once you get to the end of the list, you put an emoji react on it (I usually use numbers so I can see how often I’ve completed the list, some use other stuff like emotes about how they’re feeling) and go back to the beginning. I have a tendency of biting off more than I can chew and taking a long time to complete each pass of the list; I see others with list items like “wash three dishes” and “place 5 puzzle pieces” which go a lot faster.

Or you can assign emoji to things and then react to the post once that thing is done, etc, etc. This can be nice for a shared to-do list, too; me and Lisa sometimes do that in our household Discord when each task only needs to be completed once and either of us can do it.