Task Management

This is an absolutely huge and broad subject, but I'll try to simplify.

Good task management is about dealing with and refining your inputs (i.e. minimizing them) and maintaining reliable and consistent output. Getting Things Done is a good system that outlines this in detail.

A good system of staying in contact with many projects is from Ramsey Nassar[3]. He maintains a list of projects and works on a single project at a time, usually something near the top. Then after working on a project:

Record what needs to be done next for that project
Move it to the bottom of my list of projects

This keeps a kind of visual representation of what needs tending to, either prompting the dissolving of the project or to work on it.

What You Should Do

What I do[2] is not necessarily what you should do. In fact, I am almost positive it won't work for you. The point is to try something and then look at what worked and what didn't and iterate on it.

I started out ages ago using a notebook and just jotting down a list and going through it when I had time. My mom did this and it seemed helpful. I liked the ease of a big pile that is easy to write in with no system overhead. I hated that there was no way to find anything or organize it without rewriting everything.
Later I tried a bullet journal[5], which is more of a daily practice. I liked how there was more structure, but didn't like the required daily upkeep and that it was tied to journaling and other things. Too much binding.
I tried Wunderlist, which was nice to have a slick app on a computer. But at the time I had no smartphone, so it couldn't really follow me around or work outside of a computer context, so it drifted.
I definitely tried to do the real GTD system, with envelopes and filing systems. That was short lived and I pursued other digital options, but nothing took. I loved how systemic it was and the promise of a consistent closed loop. However, consistent systems require consistent upkeep and I definitely couldn't nor wouldn't do that, as I had very little discipline nor time.
I (very very quickly) tried timeboxing everything and putting it in my calendar. This was a disaster because if you miss one thing, you are fucked and you have to move everything. I do not recommend this as the central source of todos.
I tried doing another paper list I can't fully recall.
I made my own tool[6] when I was a freelancer and that worked for a while, too. I liked that tasks were saved in a plain text file, and at the time (pandemic times), pretty much everything I did was on a computer, so it worked. As time went by and I started a corporate job that had it's own ticket tracking, my personal task management system stopped having it's value.
There was a long time here where I didn't keep a personal todo list and it was not good! I dropped a lot of things, and notably I was in the middle of a house remodel, so my brain felt like it was on fire and many things in my life suffered: friendships, work, hobbies, mental health. It wasn't good.
I ended up starting on Todoist[4] and that has been working well for me so for. Pretty basic interface with very little extras. Just enough to make it customizable but not so rigid you have to follow a system.

What I learned over this process that for me, I value a few things right now:

Adding new tasks must be easy. I now have a smart phone so I can catch tasks very easily from a variety of sources and times (email, phone, computer, at work, at home, in line at the store, talking with friends, etc.). It is easy and fast to add to my inbox. If it is not easy, I will not add new tasks and then I will not use it.
Accessibility. If I can't get to my todo list super easily, I will neglect it. If it is not effectively everywhere, I will not use it.
Simplicity and flexibility. Todoist lets you have one big pile if you want, or projects with sections, or projects with subprojects, or whatever. It is not prescriptive and allows you to make filters that let you see things however you want using those organizational elements, tags, deadlines, etc. So I am not locked into a crazy system (GTD), but I'm also not locked into a "simple" system (one big pile). If I am locked into a system, I will at a certain point rebel and then not use it (I know it's dumb, but my brain is weird).

References

Last modified: 202608110428