I often put TODO comments into my projects, including in source code. And I'll change it to DONE afterwards. I ended up keeping a list of four-letter codes:

Diagram showing how my status codes are related to each other, e.g. TODO happens before DONE

This is my collection so far:

  • IDEA: maybe someday
  • TODO: doing later
  • SOON: doing soon
  • NEXT: doing now
  • DONE: done
  • HACK: done in a cheesy way, blend of todo and done
  • WAIT: waiting for some external change (event)
  • HOLD: waiting for some internal change (of mind)
  • STOP: stopped waiting, decided not to work on it
  • NOTE: end state, just keep track of it

I don't actually use all of these! In practice I use:

  • source code: TODO, NOTE, HACK
  • task list: TODO, DONE, sometimes WAIT (for a colleague) HOLD STOP IDEA
  • game queue: WAIT (for a game to get out of early access), TODO (game is something I want to play, but don't have time), NEXT (playing) , DONE (finished the game, or at least the parts I want to play), STOP (decided not to get the game)

Is this overly complicated? Maybe Definitely!

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3 comments:

Catmacey wrote at Tuesday, December 19, 2023 at 11:05:00 AM PST

That sounds very similar to what I also use.
I have a "MAYB" instead of IDEA for things that I might like to looks at later such as possible optimisations etc.

Anonymous wrote at Friday, March 8, 2024 at 5:01:00 AM PST

Love this! The only one I find a bit confusing is "NEXT" for things doing now.

Here are some suggestions:

"DOIN"
"NOW!"
"HERE"
"ASAP"

Amit wrote at Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 4:17:00 PM PDT


Thanks Anonymous, those are great ideas! I had picked NEXT in part because at the time I was thinking I put something into a state just before I do it, and I update the state just after I do it, but I'm not actually updating it *while* I'm doing it. So NEXT is right before I do it and DONE is right after I do it.