Don't overcomplicate to-do lists. DWTS (Done, Waiting, Top 3, Soon) organizes your to-dos.

How Are You Going to Manage Everything?

Modern America is busy. Work involves meetings. Anytime, Slack communications arrive. Many software solutions offer a @-mention notification capability. Emails.

Work obligations continue. At home, there are friends, family, bills, chores, and fun things.

How are you going to keep track of it all? Enter the todo list. It’s been around forever. It’s likely to stay forever in some way, shape, or form.

Everybody has their own system. You probably modified something from middle school. Post-its? Maybe it’s an app? Maybe both, another system, or none.

I suggest a format that has worked for me in 15 years of professional and personal life.

Try it out and see if it works for you. If not, no worries. You do you! Hopefully though you can learn a thing or two, and I from you too.

It is merely a Google Doc, yes.

It's a giant list. One task per line. Indent subtasks on a new line. Add or move new tasks as needed.

I recommend using Google Docs. It's easy to use and flexible for structuring.

Prioritizing these tasks is key. I organize them using DWTS (Done, Waiting, Top 3, Soon). Chronologically is good because it implicitly provides both a priority (high, medium, low) and an ETA (now, soon, later).

Yes, I recognize the similarities to DWTS (Dancing With The Stars) TV Show. Although I'm not a fan, it's entertaining. The acronym is easy to remember and adds fun to something dull.

What each section contains

Done

All tasks' endpoint. Finish here. Don't worry about it again.

Waiting

You're blocked and can't continue. Blocked tasks usually need someone. Write Person Task so you know who's waiting.

Blocking tasks shouldn't last long. After a while, remind them kindly. If people don't help you out of kindness, they will if you're persistent.

Top 3

Mental focus areas. These can be short- to mid-term goals or recent accomplishments. 2 to 5 is a good number to stay focused.

Top 3 reminds us to prioritize. If they don't fit your Top 3 goals, delay them.

Every 1:1 at work is a project update. Another chance to list your top 3. You should know your Top 3 well and be able to discuss them confidently.

Soon

Here's your short-term to-do list. Rank them from highest to lowest.

I usually subdivide it with empty lines. First is what I have to do today, then week, then month. Subsections can be arranged however you like.

Inventories by Concept

Tasks that aren’t in your short or medium future go into the backlog. 
Eventually you’ll complete these tasks, assign them to someone else, or mark them as “wont’ do” (like done but in another sense).

Backlog tasks don't need to be organized chronologically because their timing and priority may change. Theme-organize them. When planning/strategic, you can choose themes to focus on, so future top 3 topics.

More Tips on Todos

Decide Upon a Morning Goal

Morning routines are universal. Coffee and Wordle. My to-do list is next. Two things:

• As needed, update the to-do list: based on the events of yesterday and any fresh priorities.

• Pick a few jobs to complete today: Pick a few goals that you know you can complete today. Push the remainder below and move them to the top of the Soon section. I typically select a few tasks I am confident I can complete along with one stretch task that might extend into tomorrow.

Finally. By setting and achieving small goals every day, you feel accomplished and make steady progress on medium and long-term goals.

Tech companies call this a daily standup. Everyone shares what they did yesterday, what they're doing today, and any blockers. The name comes from a tradition of holding meetings while standing up to keep them short. Even though it's virtual, everyone still wants a quick meeting.

Your team may or may not need daily standups. Make a daily review a habit with your coffee.

Review Backwards & Forwards on a regular basis

While you're updating your to-do list daily, take time to review it.

Review your Done list. Remember things you're proud of and things that could have gone better. Your Done list can be long. Archive it so your main to-do list isn't overwhelming.

Future-gaze. What you considered important may no longer be. Reorder tasks. Backlog grooming is a workplace term.

Backwards-and-forwards reviews aren't required often. Every 3-6 months is fine. They help you see the forest as often as the trees.

Final Remarks

Keep your list simple. Done, Waiting, Top 3, Soon. These are the necessary sections. If you like, add more subsections; otherwise, keep it simple.

I recommend a morning review. By having clear goals and an action-oriented attitude, you'll be successful.

Most productive people are habitual.

Early in the day, do important tasks.

In his best-selling book Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy advised starting the day with your hardest, most important activity.

Most individuals work best in the morning. Energy and willpower peak then.

Mornings are also ideal for memory, focus, and problem-solving.

Thus, the morning is ideal for your hardest chores.

It makes sense to do these things during your peak performance hours.

Additionally, your morning sets the tone for the day. According to Brian Tracy, the first hour of the workday steers the remainder.

After doing your most critical chores, you may feel accomplished, confident, and motivated for the remainder of the day, which boosts productivity.

Develop Your Essentialism

In Essentialism, Greg McKeown claims that trying to be everything to everyone leads to mediocrity and tiredness.

You'll either burn out, be spread too thin, or compromise your ideals.

Greg McKeown advises Essentialism:

Clarify what’s truly important in your life and eliminate the rest.

Eliminating non-essential duties, activities, and commitments frees up time and energy for what matters most.

According to Greg McKeown, Essentialists live by design, not default.

You'll be happier and more productive if you follow your essentials.

Follow these three steps to live more essentialist.

Prioritize Your Tasks First

What matters most clarifies what matters less. List your most significant aims and values.

The clearer your priorities, the more you can focus on them.

On Essentialism, McKeown wrote, The ultimate form of effectiveness is the ability to deliberately invest our time and energy in the few things that matter most.

#2: Set Your Priorities in Order

Prioritize your priorities, not simply know them.

“If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.” — Greg McKeown

Planning each day and allocating enough time for your priorities is the best method to become more purposeful.

#3: Practice saying "no"

If a request or demand conflicts with your aims or principles, you must learn to say no.

Saying no frees up space for our priorities.

Place Sleep Above All Else

Many believe they must forego sleep to be more productive. This is false.

A productive day starts with a good night's sleep.

Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep) says:

“Getting a good night’s sleep can improve cognitive performance, creativity, and overall productivity.”

Sleep helps us learn, remember, and repair.

Unfortunately, 35% of people don't receive the recommended 79 hours of sleep per night.

Sleep deprivation can cause:

• increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and obesity

• Depression, stress, and anxiety risk are all on the rise.

• decrease in general contentment

• decline in cognitive function

To live an ideal, productive, and healthy life, you must prioritize sleep.

Follow these six sleep optimization strategies to obtain enough sleep:

• Establish a nightly ritual to relax and prepare for sleep.

• Avoid using screens an hour before bed because the blue light they emit disrupts the generation of melatonin, a necessary hormone for sleep.

• Maintain a regular sleep schedule to control your body's biological clock (and optimizes melatonin production)

• Create a peaceful, dark, and cool sleeping environment.

• Limit your intake of sweets and caffeine (especially in the hours leading up to bedtime)

• Regular exercise (but not right before you go to bed, because your body temperature will be too high)

Sleep is one of the best ways to boost productivity.

Sleep is crucial, says Matthew Walker. It's the key to good health and longevity.

What Is That?

Berkus is a pre-revenue valuation method based exclusively on qualitative criteria, like Scorecard.

Few firms match their financial estimates, especially in the early stages, so valuation methodologies like the Berkus method are a good way to establish a valuation when the economic measures are not reliable.

How does it work?

This technique evaluates five key success factors.

• Fundamental principle

• Technology

• Execution

• Strategic alliances in its primary market

• Production, followed by sales

The Berkus technique values the business idea and four success factors. As seen in the matrix below, each of these dimensions poses a danger to the startup's success.

It assigns $0-$500,000 to each of these beginning regions. This approach enables a maximum $2.5M pre-money valuation.

This approach relies significantly on geography and uses the US as a baseline, as it differs in every country in Europe.

A set of standards for analyzing each dimension individually

Fundamental principle (or strength of the idea)

Ideas are worthless; execution matters. Most of us can relate to seeing a new business open in our area or a startup get funded and thinking, "I had this concept years ago!" Someone did it.

The concept remains. To assess the idea's viability, we must consider several criteria.

• The concept's exclusivity It is necessary to protect a product or service's concept using patents and copyrights. Additionally, it must be capable of generating large profits.

• Planned growth and growth that goes in a specific direction have a lot of potential, therefore incorporating them into a business is really advantageous.

• The ability of a concept to grow A venture's ability to generate scalable revenue is a key factor in its emergence and continuation. A startup needs a scalable idea in order to compete successfully in the market.

• The attraction of a business idea to a broad spectrum of people is significantly influenced by the current socio-political climate. Thus, the requirement for the assumption of conformity.

• Concept Validation Ideas must go through rigorous testing with a variety of audiences in order to lower risk during the implementation phase.

Technology (Prototype)

This aspect reduces startup's technological risk. How good is the startup prototype when facing cyber threats, GDPR compliance (in Europe), tech stack replication difficulty, etc.?

Execution

Check the management team's efficacy. A potential angel investor must verify the founders' experience and track record with previous ventures. Good leadership is needed to chart a ship's course.

Strategic alliances in its primary market

Existing and new relationships will play a vital role in the development of both B2B and B2C startups. What are the startup's synergies? potential ones?

Production, followed by sales (product rollout)

Startup success depends on its manufacturing and product rollout. It depends on the overall addressable market, the startup's ability to market and sell their product, and their capacity to provide consistent, high-quality support.

Example

We're now founders of EyeCaramba, a machine vision-assisted streaming platform. My imagination always goes to poor puns when naming a startup.

Since we're first-time founders and the Berkus technique depends exclusively on qualitative methods and the evaluator's skill, we ask our angel-investor acquaintance for a pre-money appraisal of EyeCaramba.

Our friend offers us the following table:

Because we're first-time founders, our pal lowered our Execution score. He knows the idea's value and that the gaming industry is red-hot, with worse startup ideas getting funded, therefore he gave the Basic value the highest value (idea).

EyeCaramba's pre-money valuation is $400,000 + $250,000 + $75,000 + $275,000 + $164,000 (1.16M). Good.

References

• https://medium.com/humble-ventures/how-angel-investors-value-pre-revenue-startups-part-iii-8271405f0774#:~:text=pre%2Drevenue%20startups.-,Berkus%20Method,potential%20of%20the%20idea%20itself.%E2%80%9D

• https://eqvista.com/berkus-valuation-method-for-startups/

• https://www.venionaire.com/early-stage-startup-valuation-part-2-the-berkus-method/

These four, when combined, destroy procrastination.

You're not rushed. You waste it on busywork.

You'll accept this eventually.

• In 2022, the daily average usage of a user on social media is 2.5 hours.

• By 2020, 6 billion hours of video were watched each month by Netflix's customers, who used the service an average of 3.2 hours per day.

When we see these numbers, we think "Wow!" People squander so much time as though they don't contribute. True. These are yours. Likewise.

We don't lack time; we just waste it. Once you realize this, you can change your habits to save time. This article explains. If you adopt ALL 4 of these simple behaviors, you'll see amazing benefits.

Time-blocking

Cal Newport's time-blocking trick takes a minute but improves your day's clarity.

Divide the next day into 30-minute (or 5-minute, if you're Elon Musk) segments and assign responsibilities. As seen.

Here's why:

• The procrastination that results from attempting to determine when to begin working is eliminated. Procrastination is a given if you choose when to begin working in real-time. Even if you may assume you'll start working in five minutes, it won't take you long to realize that five minutes have turned into an hour. But if you've already determined to start working at 2:00 the next day, your odds of procrastinating are greatly decreased, if not eliminated altogether.

• You'll also see that you have a lot of time in a day when you plan your day out on paper and assign chores to each hour. Doing this daily will permanently eliminate the lack of time mindset.

5-4-3-2-1: Have breakfast with the frog!

“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

Eating the frog means accomplishing the day's most difficult chore. It's better to schedule it first thing in the morning when time-blocking the night before. Why?

• The day's most difficult task is also the one that causes the most postponement. Because of the stress it causes, the later you schedule it, the more time you risk wasting by procrastinating.

• However, if you do it right away in the morning, you'll feel good all day. This is the reason it was set for the morning.

Mel Robbins' 5-second rule can help. Start counting backward 54321 and force yourself to start at 1. If you acquire the urge to work on a goal, you must act within 5 seconds or your brain will destroy it. If you're scheduled to eat your frog at 9, eat it at 8:59. Start working.

Micro-visualisation

You've heard of visualizing to enhance the future. Visualizing a bright future won't do much if you're not prepared to focus on the now and develop the necessary habits. Alexander said:

People don’t decide their futures. They decide their habits and their habits decide their future.

I visualize the next day's schedule every morning. My day looks like this

“I’ll start writing an article at 7:30 AM. Then, I’ll get dressed up and reach the medicine outpatient department by 9:30 AM. After my duty is over, I’ll have lunch at 2 PM, followed by a nap at 3 PM. Then, I’ll go to the gym at 4…”

etc.

This reinforces the day you planned the night before. This makes following your plan easy.

Set the timer.

It's the best iPhone productivity app. A timer is incredible for increasing productivity.

Set a timer for an hour or 40 minutes before starting work. Your call. I don't believe in techniques like the Pomodoro because I can focus for varied amounts of time depending on the time of day, how fatigued I am, and how cognitively demanding the activity is.

I work with a timer. A timer keeps you focused and prevents distractions. Your mind stays concentrated because of the timer. Timers generate accountability.

To pee, I'll pause my timer. When I sit down, I'll continue. Same goes for bottle refills. To use Twitter, I must pause the timer. This creates accountability and focuses work.

Connecting everything

If you do all 4, you won't be disappointed. Here's how:

• Plan out your day's schedule the night before.

• Next, envision in your mind's eye the same timetable in the morning.

• Speak aloud 54321 when it's time to work: Eat the frog! In the morning, devour the largest frog.

• Then set a timer to ensure that you remain focused on the task at hand.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is an amazing AI-powered chatbot. It can write poetry, stories, and marketing campaigns, and it's also adept at coding. ChatGPT's coding is so amazing that it replicated itself. What happened:

Me: Hi

Hello! Can I help? I'll answer any inquiries you have.

Me: Build a python and flask AI chatbot that responds to user messages on the frontend.

CGPT:

from flask import Flask, request, jsonify

import openai
openai.api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY"

@app.route('/chatbot', methods=['POST'])
def chatbot():
    user_message = request.get_json()['message']
    response = chatbot_response(user_message)
    return jsonify({'response': response})


def chatbot_response(user_message):
    response = openai.Completion.create(
        engine="text-davinci-002",
        prompt=user_message,
        max_tokens=1024,
        n = 1,
        temperature=0.5
    )
    return response['choices'][0]['text']

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

To integrate a chatbot with a frontend, use Flask to serve an HTML page with a form for user messages and the chatbot's answer. AJAX can submit the form to the /chatbot route, and JavaScript can show the chatbot's response.

I imported code snippets at the top of the file.

Let's add a frontend interface, I said.

CGPT:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>AI Chatbot</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>AI Chatbot</h1>
    <form id="chatbot-form">
        <label for="message">Message:</label><br>
        <input type="text" id="message" name="message"><br>
        <input type="submit" value="Submit">
    </form> 
    <div id="chatbot-response"></div>

    <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <script>
        $(document).ready(function() {
            $("#chatbot-form").submit(function(e) {
                e.preventDefault();
                var userMessage = $("#message").val();
                $.ajax({
                    type: "POST",
                    url: "/chatbot",
                    data: JSON.stringify({message: userMessage}),
                    contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
                    dataType: "json",
                    success: function(response) {
                        $("#chatbot-response").text(response.response);
                    }
                });
            });
        });
    </script>
</body>
</html>

To serve this HTML page using Flask, build a new route that returns the page as a GET response.

So far, so good.

Looked quite basic so I got chatGPT to add some tailwind to the project.

Me: Tailwind the chatbot.html page, please. Give it a futuristic style with purple and neon

After a few more prompts, Talk GPT aligned the form to the center, changed some colors, and added padding.

CGPT:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>AI Chatbot</title>
    <link href="https://unpkg.com/tailwindcss@^1.0/dist/tailwind.min.css" rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body class="bg-black flex flex-col justify-center items-center">
    <h1 class="sm:text-center text-purple-500">AI Chatbot</h1>
    <form id="chatbot-form" class="border-purple-500 bg-purple-800 rounded">
        <label for="message">Message:</label><br>
        <input type="text" id="message" name="message" class="min-w-30 rounded"><br>
        <input type="submit" value="Submit" class="bg-purple-500 border-red-500 transform hover:scale-110 rounded">
    </form> 
    <div class="flex justify-center">
        <div id="chatbot-response" class="text-white rounded"></div>
    </div>

    <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <script>
        var colors = ['red', 'orange', 'yellow', 'green', 'blue', 'indigo', 'violet'];
        var colorIndex = 0;
        
        $(document).ready(function() {
            setInterval(function() {
                $("#chatbot-form").css('border-color', colors[colorIndex]);
                colorIndex = (colorIndex + 1) % colors.length;
            }, 1000);

            $("#chatbot-form").submit(function(e) {
                e.preventDefault();
                var userMessage = $("#message").val();
                $.ajax({
                    type: "POST",
                    url: "/chatbot",
                    data: JSON.stringify({message: userMessage}),
                    contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
                    dataType: "json",
                    success: function(response) {
                        $("#chatbot-response").text(response.response);
                    }
                });
            });
        });
    </script>
</body>
</html>

Improved:

A few more prompts like “Add more vertical and horizontal padding to the submit button and vertical margin, and vertically align this file's body.”

The result:

Is it effective? Now, I'll chat with ChatGPT's AI Chatbot. I intervened minimally throughout construction. Chat GPT created numerous files, connected and interacted with its own API, and presented the user request response on the front end by itself.

Me to AI Chatbot: Hey, can you give me 6 name suggestions for a black horse?

Me to AI Chatbot: Write a poem in the style of Jim Morrison. Make sure to mention cacti and black holes

ChatGPTs Chatbot:

In the desert night, I am confronted by cacti, 
Their arms reaching out, As if to grab me and take me away. 
The stars in the sky, Beckon me to come, 
To a world of black holes, Where I can be free. 
I am in a trance, My body and mind, 
In a state of limbo, As I wander the night. 
I hear a voice, Calling me to the unknown, 
I cannot resist, The lure of the black hole. 
The cacti watch, As I take my leave, 
To a place of mystery, Where I can find peace.

Of course, the next question I gave it was to build a chatbot!

Me: Build a python and flask AI chatbot that responds to user messages on the frontend.

ChatbotGPTs:

import os from flask 
import Flask, request, jsonify 
from chatterbot 
import ChatBot 
from chatterbot.trainers 
import ListTrainer 

# Create a new chatbot 
bot = ChatBot( 
  "My Bot", 
  storage_adapter="chatterbot.storage.SQLStorageAdapter", 
  logic_adapters=[ 
    "chatterbot.logic.BestMatch", 
    { "import_path": "chatterbot.logic.BestMatch", 
      "statement_comparison_function": "chatterbot.comparisons.levenshtein_distance", 
       "response_selection_method": "chatterbot.response_selection.get_first_response" } 
    ], 
    database_uri="sqlite:///database.sqlite3" ) 

# Train the chatbot with a few sample conversations 
conversation = [ "Hello", "Hi there!", "How are you doing?", "I'm doing great.", "That is good to hear", "Thank you.", "You're welcome." ] 
trainer = ListTrainer(bot) trainer.train(conversation) 

# Create a Flask app 
app = Flask(__name__) 

# Define a route for the default URL 
@app.route("/") def index(): return "<h1>Chatbot</h1>" 

# Define a route for the /get_response URL 
@app.route("/get_response", methods=["POST"]) 

def get_response(): 
# Get the user's message 
user_message = request.form["user_message"] 
# Get the bot's response 
bot_response = bot.get_response(user_message) 
# Return the bot's response 
return str(bot_response) 
# Run the Flask 
app if __name__ == "__main__": app.run()

No matter how many times I tried, the second generation always used chatterbot instead of the ChatGPT API. Even when I told it to use the ChatGPT API, it didn't.

ChatGTP's ability to reproduce or construct other machine learning algorithms is interesting and possibly terrifying. Nothing prevents ChatGPT from replicating itself ad infinitum throughout the Internet other than a lack of desire. This may be the first time a machine repeats itself, so I've preserved the project as a reference. Adding a requirements.txt file and python env for easier deployment is the only change to the code.

I hope you enjoyed this.