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Done List

The done list is where you write down everything that you've accomplished. It's the absolutely vital complement to the to-do list that productive people like Marc Andreessen use.

When you reflect on your day's accomplishments, you'll often realize that you got more done than you'd otherwise give yourself credit for. It'll set you up to make improvements and feel great about tackling the next day.

Start here with our done list guide.

Marc Andreessen’s Productivity Trick to Feeling Marvelously Efficient

October 23, 2012 by I Done This Support 5 Comments

I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon among productive people: they often overlook their own productivity.  The more productive you are, the more likely you are to get down on yourself and think at the end of the day, “I wasn’t very productive today.”

Because ambitious people measure themselves by their progress towards achieving audacious goals, they often can’t appreciate a single day’s worth of tiny, incremental advancements that they’ve made.  Plus, the fuller your day is with activity, the harder it seems to pinpoint what exactly it is that you did at all.

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Between starting Netscape, Opsware, Ning, and Andreessen Horowitz, Marc Andreessen has done monumental work in his career and seems particularly at risk to fall into this trap.  To arm himself against the daunting imperative of making meaningful progress toward his big objectives, Marc came up with a system: the Anti-Todo List.  It’s his way to stop and recognize his own accomplishments, measured not by a project’s impressive success, but in increments, to fuel his motivation for getting stuff done day after day.

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Filed Under: Done List Tagged With: Intrinsic Motivation, Progress, Self-Reflection

The Power of the Done List

August 2, 2012 by I Done This Support 8 Comments

Well Done List Card

The Problem: To-Do Lists Don’t Work for Me.

To-do lists just don’t work for some people.

We may be more right-brained. Perhaps our working styles don’t mesh with more intricate prioritizing or the task list format. Whatever it is, we know that one productivity system does not fit all. 

Plus, a recent study by Amy Dalton and Stephen Spiller found that detailed planning works when you have one big to-do item, but the longer the list, the less powerful a tool it is to get stuff done.

For those of us who are unmoved by the to-do list (and the arguments of its most fervent disciples), we feel that they loom without spurring action, rebuke without encouragement. They don’t care about our circumstances or our moods. In fact, they don’t care about us at all, sitting there with items unchecked and uncrossed, coldly expectant. And in return, we don’t care about them. To-do lists can’t be effective when they are simultaneously discouraging and easy to ignore.

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Filed Under: Done List Tagged With: Intrinsic Motivation, Productivity, To-Do List

To-Do Lists and Keeping It Positive

July 9, 2012 by I Done This Support Leave a Comment

why?

Recently, we highlighted a method of planning your day that consisted of asking yourself what you’d say “No” to. Just as important is to ask yourself “Why?” when it comes to the items on your to-do list.

Psychologist Michael V. Pantalon recommends making a Why-Do list to increase your motivation on those items that just never seem to make it off your to-do list. The key to Pantalon’s “Why?” exercise is keeping it positive. So instead of asking yourself negatively charged questions like, “Why can’t I do ____”, focus on the reasons why you wanted to do it in the first place and why those reasons are important to you.

This way, you may see how some to-do items don’t belong on your list and be more motivated to accomplish others — which connects back to knowing what to say “No” to.

Ask yourself “Why?” to know what to say “No” to.

Photo: Sarah-Wynne Taylor

Filed Under: Done List Tagged With: Intrinsic Motivation, Productivity, Time Management

Something Good in Every Day

May 8, 2012 by I Done This Support 1 Comment

Hope your dones are part of the good in every day!

Filed Under: Done List

Terri Trespicio on How to Own Your Time

February 23, 2012 by I Done This Support Leave a Comment

Terri Trespicio is a writer, editor, host, broadcaster, healthy living expert, and former senior editor at Martha Stewart’s Whole Living magazine. She also hosted the live, daily call-in show “Whole Living” on Martha Stewart Living Radio on Sirius XM 110. Terri has appeared on the Today show, Dr. Oz, The Early Show, and The Martha Stewart Show. She’s also the creator of Best Decision All Day.

We chatted with Terri about the connections of health and wellness to productivity, the power of owning your time, and the navigation of career paths, as she steps out into a new chapter of self-employment.

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Photo: Chad Griffith Photography, 2011

You’ve been a great supporter of iDoneThis. How did you start using it?

This app is something I actually use is because I really do tie my sense of wellness and calm to feeling productive. Nobody wants to feel like they’re spinning their wheels, not sure from one day to the next what they’re doing. Now that I’m not answering to a team so much and working on my own from home, I like to be able to keep track of what I’ve done. it’s just a cool way to feel good about not just what tasks you’re getting done but things that are building you toward what you want to achieve.

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Filed Under: Done List Tagged With: Career Growth, Time Management

Matthew Stibbe, Founder of Turbine & CEO of Articulate Marketing

February 15, 2012 by I Done This Support Leave a Comment

Matthew Stibbe is the CEO of Articulate Marketing, a marketing copywriting agency, and founder of Turbine, an online application that helps businesses take care of administrative issues, to “take the paper out of paperwork.” In what he calls his spare time, he’s learning Dutch and blogging about flying and about writing and productivity. We talked about his faith in to-do lists, the shortcomings of productivity systems, and how we are all becoming robots.

Since you’re in charge of two companies that do different things, how do you divide and maximize your time?

I am a devotee, a worshipper in the temple of lists. I love to-do lists. I’ve had this same list running in various versions of Microsoft software back almost 20 years, and it’s a very strange thought to think that the items on the list have changed, change constantly, but the list is still here. I’ve still got it, and it’s still fundamentally the same electronic thing that I had when I was running my computer games company in the nineties. It’s an interesting philosophical point — one day we will all become lists, some computer memory somewhere.

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Filed Under: Done List Tagged With: Productivity

Who Says It Can’t Be Done?

February 14, 2012 by I Done This Support Leave a Comment

It Couldn’t Be Done – Edgar Albert Guest

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
      But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
      Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
      On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
      That couldn’t be done, and he did it!
Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
      At least no one ever has done it;”
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat
      And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
      Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
      That couldn’t be done, and he did it.
There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
      There are thousands to prophesy failure,
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
      The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
      Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
      That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.

Filed Under: Done List Tagged With: Intrinsic Motivation

Report Your Dones

January 26, 2012 by I Done This Support Leave a Comment

Wanting to report what you’ve gotten done is a perfectly natural inclination.  Before today, we had a rudimentary CSV export file and the option to copy and paste, but no doubt, iDoneThis users deserve better.

Click and drag on the calendar to highlight multiple days’ worth of accomplishments. Where the yellow circle is in the image above, you’ll see 3 icons.  Plain text, PDF, and email.  

The plain text export will make it much easier to copy and paste your dones, the PDF button will give you a nice report of what you’ve gotten done, and the email icon will let you send off your accomplishments to anyone you choose.

Filed Under: Done List

Notes for Inspiration

January 24, 2012 by I Done This Support Leave a Comment


Some to-do inspiration.

Filed Under: Done List

Just Little Things We Love

January 19, 2012 by I Done This Support Leave a Comment

Just Little Things

Don’t you love the little things in life? We sure do!

Filed Under: Done List

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