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Anti-procrastination Hacks: Dynamic Unordered Todo List

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Attronarch:

I think there's a problem intrinsic to trying to make OnTask digital.  Some things need to be touched, and felt, and simple in order to succeed. What I've found using OnTask is that I'm bad at prioritizing large amounts of anything, and estimating how long something does take or should take, and easily distracted.  Backlogs, after working with Agile for 4+ years don't really work, as you're never really trying to clear them, so they become built up with a lot of detritus that distract.  There's a whole lot of that on our backlog at work, and we're never going to prioritize them, even if we have nothing to do.  They just don't matter.  And so the stack rank becomes meaningless. 

-wraith808 (July 02, 2017, 08:49 AM)
--- End quote ---

Don't get me wrong, but it seems that your team needs some help with getting their scrum or kanban game to next level.

Your backlog piling up is not necessarily a bad sign. That is, if you stop to reflect on it and dig into the root cause of it.

There are no agile boards. There is a scrum board (or sprint board) and kanban board. I prefer kanban approach.

The OnTask thingy you mention is very minimal kanban system - prioritize 3 tasks, limit WIP to 1.

wraith808:

I think there's a problem intrinsic to trying to make OnTask digital.  Some things need to be touched, and felt, and simple in order to succeed. What I've found using OnTask is that I'm bad at prioritizing large amounts of anything, and estimating how long something does take or should take, and easily distracted.  Backlogs, after working with Agile for 4+ years don't really work, as you're never really trying to clear them, so they become built up with a lot of detritus that distract.  There's a whole lot of that on our backlog at work, and we're never going to prioritize them, even if we have nothing to do.  They just don't matter.  And so the stack rank becomes meaningless. 

-wraith808 (July 02, 2017, 08:49 AM)
--- End quote ---

Don't get me wrong, but it seems that your team needs some help with getting their scrum or kanban game to next level.

Your backlog piling up is not necessarily a bad sign. That is, if you stop to reflect on it and dig into the root cause of it.

There are no agile boards. There is a scrum board (or sprint board) and kanban board. I prefer kanban approach.

The OnTask thingy you mention is very minimal kanban system - prioritize 3 tasks, limit WIP to 1.
-Attronarch (August 21, 2017, 03:43 PM)
--- End quote ---

I never said anything about Agile boards looking at that statement.  I talked about backlogs.  The backlogs are of things that have been prioritized and stack ranked, but their ranking never changes because we have more higher priority things.  We know this.  But the stuff at the bottom, we never get to, because there's so much work on higher priority work to be done.  And yes, that's what the on task thing is; I know about scrum and kanban, and know that our scrum process isn't necessarily the best.  But the powers that be don't want it to be the best.  They want to say that they're using agile, but maintain control.  They want to know everything about how things are going to turn out from the beginning.  So we're constrained by that mindset, and they make the rules and pay the checks, so I just shrug.

But that's not my primary desire to use it.  It's the fact that it's physical.  And it's to get around my own problems in prioritizing a large amount of tasks.

Attronarch:
I never said anything about Agile boards looking at that statement.  I talked about backlogs. 
-wraith808 (August 21, 2017, 07:55 PM)
--- End quote ---

True, it was in another that I haven't quoted. This one:

... The purpose of an agile board (and trello) is not in the implementation, but the backlog. ...
-wraith808 (June 30, 2017, 11:11 PM)
--- End quote ---

Anyway, it sounds like organisation you are in is more involved in pretending to be agile rather than trying to become more agile and your team is adapting. Just make sure you don't carry-over any bad practices once you switch organisations. :)

I'd recommend joining local meetups, if you haven' already. Those can be good places for intellectual sparring and building competence outside your organisation.

wraith808:
I never said anything about Agile boards looking at that statement.  I talked about backlogs. 
-wraith808 (August 21, 2017, 07:55 PM)
--- End quote ---

True, it was in another that I haven't quoted. This one:

... The purpose of an agile board (and trello) is not in the implementation, but the backlog. ...
-wraith808 (June 30, 2017, 11:11 PM)
--- End quote ---

Anyway, it sounds like organisation you are in is more involved in pretending to be agile rather than trying to become more agile and your team is adapting. Just make sure you don't carry-over any bad practices once you switch organisations. :)

I'd recommend joining local meetups, if you haven' already. Those can be good places for intellectual sparring and building competence outside your organisation.
-Attronarch (August 22, 2017, 06:53 AM)
--- End quote ---

I said Agile to mean scrum/kanban rather than writing it every time; I thought that people would get the intent.  Sorry if there was any confusion.  Onward!  :Thmbsup:

kilele:
It has occurred to me an experiment based on the pomodoro technique.
There would be a task list, the app would choose one random task for you, the user would work on it for as much as wanted, over time the app would give the user three tasks with the most time spent on so far followed by one which he's barely worked on.
The more you procrastinated on certain tasks the less they would be assigned to work on them. It may sound like a procrastination-reinforcer but who knows if you'd end up working more on undesired tasks so that you could see them appear more on the active task. So the idea is: work as much as wanted on the tasks that the app gives to you, don't worry, the app decides for you and wants you to procrastinate, hopefully you'll stop procrastinating by fighting the bitchy app which tends to hide the most procrastinated tasks.

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