I'm giving workflowy a try, after paulfchristiano's suggestion.
Earlier this morning, I looked at my project list, and tried to figure out which were acorns that could lead to oaks and which were just small projects. I've significantly shifted my priorities for projects as a result. (I still want to do most of the small projects, but it's the sort of thing where I should be spending twice as much time per week on the big projects than the small projects, rather than the reverse.)
A few weeks ago I tried to close out small projects, to reduce the total number of things that I could be thinking about. I don't think that worked particularly well, but I don't know how much of that is an artifact of the current project list I have (where several projects require waiting until some future point to do the next task), or what an optimal number of projects for me to have is.
Workflowy sounded cool, but I've tried so many similar apps and mind-mappers and other things supposed to boost my effectiveness (and wasting way more time using them than I was actually saving, if I was even saving any) that I've become very wary of trying any new ones.
For some reason, your comment prompted me to try it, even though the suggestion that led you to post this in the first place didn't really register enough to make me go try it.
So, all this leading up to: I'll also be giving it a try. It seems like it could be a very good midpoint between ...
This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of December 10th. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:
Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.
Thanks to everyone who contributes!
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