I’ve been thinking lately the way I try to remember all the things I ever thought I wanted or needed to do isn’t doing good things for me. I never really go back and look at those things, nor do they get picked up largely. The idea was I needed to get stuff out of my head, so I could get on with life. Enter baggage … :)

I spend more time now managing the system than the doing. (If I was being honest, I’ve been ignoring it altogether lately because it’s become large, unwieldy and I feel bad about never getting anything done.) This is getting worse. Lopp’s system is lean. He never has a list longer than he can review in 5 minutes, and he’s brutal about letting stuff go.

Taste of the Day

In which he decides whether he’s going to be in meetings all day or have focus time to dig into something. He looks at his calendar and any other signal that could inform this. This helps him make a realistic plan for the day.

“The Morning Scrub” starts every day

Every task in his entire list is re-categorized into:

  • Today,
  • Later (not today), and
  • Never (Bye bye)

Every day gets a brand new “Parking Lot” sheet

New ideas, tasks, thoughts go here. They don’t derail his day. If they seem important enough to remember at least until the evening this is where they go.

The day ends with an “Evening Scrub”

  • Parking lot goes to the later bucket. How did the day go? Are there lots of things like this? Is there a theme?
  • How did his first read in “Taste of the Day” measure up with what happened? (eg Was it actually a “meeting-infested nightmare” or something else? :))
  • Scrub today. Why didn’t it get done? Pop back to later or delete it.

Other important aspects of his list:

  • No hierarchy. Less list managing and more doing.
  • Uses 1 tag per task to say who’s important to it. (eg Carmen) He will look for all tasks needing a specific person. (Good for 1:1s)
  • No priorities. Priorities are relative and they shift.
  • No dates. He scrubs the whole list daily and making schedule choices all the time which is also a priority decision.

Important ideas:

  • “Deletion is advanced task management-fu”
  • “Priority is relative”
  • “You can’t do everything on your list so don’t sweat it”
  • “Strategic insight comes from well-informed chaos”
  • “The point of productivity system is perfect tracking - it’s keeping the important things top of mind”. In this way we can make better decisions in the key moments that come up.

Source: The Software Developer’s Career Handbook, August 2023

The “Trickle List”:

Task lists are tactical things. Do this, then that, then this other thing. They’re not strategic in the sense that you might be losing sight of overarching career, growth, or personal goals if they’re all you ever do. Maybe they give you feelings of great accomplishment because you’re knocking off the small stuff, but ignoring longer term goals. (Difference between efficient and effective.)

Trickle Theory says one can improve by investing tiny amounts of time in a few key things, over long periods. (Deliberate practice?)

How do you find the handful of things to put in an every-day trickle list? Role-dependant. Task-dependant. Lopp’s current list:

  • People—Have a random chat with someone in the hallway
  • Write—Write something, anything
  • V—Take a vitamin
  • Biz—Learn a part of the business
  • Book—Read something in a book

Not a task list. He calls it “designing moments of high potential”.

He steps back from his highly structured day to have a random conversation, and maybe he learns about a project at risk, or somebody in the company who isn’t happy. More often than not it’s fluffy but every once in a while he learns something important. Either way he’s connecting to another human, and staying visible which is important in our work lives.

He keeps things on his trickle list small so that he’s more likely to do them, but impactful. A new chance to accomplish them shows up every day alongside his today list.

Look at yesterday’s “Trickle List” after “The Morning Scrub” and “Parking Lot”

Did he miss anything? Why? Never beats himself up over misses and continuously deciding if there’s anything to swap out, retire, or add to the list as his longer term goals / headings change.