Done Lists and Anti-ToDo Lists

Jots is an online “Done List” or “Anti-ToDo List”.  With a Done List, instead of writing down what you need to do, you write down what you’ve accomplished.  By filling out your Done List as you go about your tasks, at the end of the day you can look back and marvel at all you’ve done.

Let’s face it, how often do items on your ToDo list for the day actually get done?  For most people, not very much.

Things come up during the day that knock you off the path of fulfilling your ToDo list. Instead of feeling weary and unproductive, you can look back on your Done List and see how much you’ve really accomplished. You’ll find that you were actually very productive, doing things not even on your ToDo list.

People have written about these kinds of “Lists” before.  See what they have to say:

• iDoneThis writes about Marc Andreessen’s trick to feeling efficient
• Joel Gascoigne wrote about Anti-ToDo Lists
• The Anti-ToDo list for quick wins
• Working on a bazillion things but not feeling productive
• even LifeHacker has written about them

So, what does this have to do with Jots?

Jots is your personal Done List on the web.  You won’t need to carry around a notebook or scraps of paper to track what you’ve done.

What’s even better? Instead of a single list with all your entries, you make your entries into cards (which in the physical world are like sheets of paper, or journals). This way, the things you’ve done are sorted.

So say you have a card for ‘Workouts’ and a card for ’Web Development Project’.  Whenever you exercise, you make an entry into the ’Workouts’ card.  Whenever you work on your website, you make an entry into the ’Web Development Project’ card. Now you’ll able to see each list on their own, in addition to seeing everything in a single unified feed.  

We’ll be launching Jots soon, so sign up to get notified when we do at jots.me