Where to post this feels tricky. The terms in my post title -- "Product Backlog" and "Sprint" are very IT-specific terms from a popular business management philosophy (Agile) and methodology (Scrum) for creating software.

However, I am intentionally trying to adopt and adapt these concepts to my own life goals, personal improvement efforts and general day-to-day "get shit done" task lists.

Has anyone else done this? It only just now occurred to me to search the 'Net to see how unusual this idea is, and of course, I'm seeing plenty of evidence that I'm not the first person to think of it.

For the non-IT folk, here's the nutshell version. Large, long-term software development projects get broken down into bite-sized tasks, those pieces get prioritized and best-guesstimated as to each one's difficulty, and then short-term "Sprints" (each generally 1 week to 1 month long) are devoted to completing a selected subset of those tasks.

As an on-going process, the overall project goals and tasklist (the "Product Backlog") get reviewed, re-evaluated and re-prioritized, and past efforts are regularly evaluated for effectiveness, and the lessons learned get incorporated into future planning.

Probably the most significant piece of the Agile philosophy is the iterative process. Never lose sight of the overarching goal, but focus -- hard -- on those bite-sized pieces, always review your own efforts and learn how to improve your process of getting things done, and always be ready to modify all mid-term and long-term goals as the journey unfolds, as new information comes to light.

... And I realize I'm meandering, perhaps, a bit too much into the philosophy of software development ... but I hope it's clear how well this could translate over to personal development, life goals, self-help, stuff like that.

At any rate, that's what I'm doing over the next two weeks ... I'm running my own personal "Life Goals" Sprint, adopting the various tools and terms and ideas built into Agile -- and specifically, the Scrum-style implementation of Agile (which is more philosophy than process). Depending on how it goes, I may well be doing this for a long time to come.

Would love to discuss the idea, get feedback, pros and cons, yada ...

I think I want to use some type of productivity software as a bit of a more in-depth to do list. I am thinking of using Trello, which seems to have a ton of features and does mostly what I want. However, I have no need for any of the collaboration aspects as I wouldn't be using this with a team or coworkers, just myself. So I am wondering if there isn't some other software I can use to stay organized that doesn't have a ton of features I won't use. Do any of you all use something similar? Open to all suggestions, both for programs or general practices.

I've been thinking about note-taking a lot recently. I'm not a particularly great note-taker myself, though I do use a calendar and a to-do list. My SO is a habitual digital note-taker, but also a hand-written journaller too. I do neither of these things (and don't feel the worse for the lack), but I am curious about how my fellow tilderen feel towards notes in general, and journalling to a lesser extent.

Are you a note-taker? If not, why not? If so, how does it add value to your life? Do you prefer a digital or a pen-and-paper notebook, or even a hybrid approach? And do you have a system?

Specially those of you who attend courses on the field of humanities, in which I feel the amount of note-taking is even greater than most fields, given all the reading and talking that occurs during classes and out of them. How do you do it? Do you write on paper perhaps, or do you find that digital notes suit you better?
I'm asking this because I am about to start my studies (finally) and am curious about how other people handle this task which, honestly, has been a nuisance through all my life. I'm not the best at organizing my notes and I believe it harms my studying overall.

Hi,

I'm wondering how and if you're taking notes and how you manage them. I feel like I can't get to the right solution. I want something open and own my data, so I tend to prefer plain text / markdown files and I want to manage them on my own for privacy reasons but still be able to sync and edit them on my mobile device (iOS), desktop (macOS) and ideally online and also have full text search.

I know about Microsoft OneNote, Google Docs/Keep, Evernote - but I just can't overcome myself to use them since it's hard to impossible to get data out of there.

Right now I'm hosting my own git repository with gitea.io and I'm able to edit my notes on the web, on my desktop (using git clone/pull/commit/push) and with a git client (working copy) on my phone. The downside: I need to manually commit and push my changes and also pull them, it's not really in sync.

Edit: Typo in Topic. Read it as "How many..." or "Do ~many of~ you..."

A Kanban board is a work and workflow visualization tool that enables you to optimize the flow of your work. Source

I am using the NextCloud's Deck app to manage my Kanban board, just got started. Other Digital boards: Cryptpad (has kanban board) and Taiga. I know only these implementation and all of these work well.

Update: I am no longer using it.