Julian Lehr

I agree and practice Points No. 2, 3, and 4, but the main title of the post and Point No. 1 isn’t, at least in my opinion, a good one.

If I leave something “unfinished” intentionally when I could have finished it, I would likely not sleep right, eat with ease, talk to other people, so on and so forth.

However, I agree that if time is a constraint and the task is “lengthy,” I suggest keeping it to a stage of completion at a stage and then picking up the next day/time.

Many smart people want to keep something ready for tomorrow because they tend to be lost when there are no instructions on what is next. My suggestion would be to have a “Default,” which can be a simple set of instructions in plain text, something along the lines of, “If I’m stuck and have no clue what I have to do — then here are the defaults - do this, then this or that.” These can be bigger-picture goals or the “waypoints” for your daily/weekly tasks that you have to do.

I have been practicing the idea of the “Defaults” for a pretty long time but I got a lot more clarity and definitions from “The Power of Defaults.”[1][2] These are the things I keep on the top of my mind and return to when I’m stuck, confused, or doubtful.

1. https://julian.digital/2021/12/20/the-power-of-defaults/

2. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-power-of-defaults/

My pet theory is that it is the data model: everyone must support ical/Exchange and those only support events with a textual description.

Events may be a part, but not the only part of a good calender. There is a lot of stuff which could be part of a calender but doesn't necessary fit into the event paradigm: Fuzzy events like the car inspection you are putting of. Transit times - not just the fixed time span you get today, but integration of public transport or current car traffic, so that you can plan. If you're menstruating a period tracker. Your health and sleep data. The weather, the day-night-cycle for your location. All background data with time and date, which we have, but not just in our calendars.

And even traditional events are limited: I'd like to have a general repeating workday event but also like events in that workday as extra events. With a normal digital calendar they are clashing. Hierarchical events would be a solution.

Or multi-layered events, some years back there was this blog post on HN which made me rather unhappy with iCal:

https://julian.digital/2023/07/06/multi-layered-calendars/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36617504

I’m building a small integration to take scheduled transactions in YNAB and display them in any normal calendar application. I’m hoping to add historical transactions one day as well to help with reconciling.

https://calendarforynab.com

Any feedback is welcome!

I once saw an idea on here[1] about putting a lot more historical information into a calendar, including past activities. It resonated with me and I wondered if bank transactions could be part of this activity layer. At the time I was working on a real-time integration between my bank and YNAB so I was already thinking about the space.

1: https://julian.digital/2023/07/06/multi-layered-calendars/