I create two lists: needs and wants. I prioritise them as such:

1 = no harm if not done; 2 = annoying if not done; 3 = disappoint someone if not done; 4 = financial or emotional harm if not done; 5 = financial and emotional harm if not done.

This is applied to both sets of items on each type of list.

Now I know what I NEED to do above all else, and then I can get to what I WANT to do later.

awesome!

Definitely a great one! You can't buy your way to productivity with fancy tech. Though a nice ergonomic keyboard, standing desk, and eye-level monitor certainly doesn't hurt.

For list making I've found Eisenhower matrixes[0] to be incredibly useful. That eventually morphed into me using a trello board with four columns that line up with the four quadrants, here's an example:

https://trello.com/b/pfcMyml7/eisenhower-matrix-inspired-tod...

[0]: http://www.eisenhower.me/eisenhower-matrix/

Whenever I pack my bag in the morning, even if I have 4-5 hours before I leave, I forget something. The phone, the wallet, the cash I plan to carry in the wallet, the keys, the pencil case, the books... I just have to make it the night before. And generalising this and what you say, simply preparing for the day ahead is a very very useful thing. Maybe for a certain type of people though, because I've known some of those people which just remember the things when they need to, without any effort nor any notes.

This, and also marking which one is the worst one, so I do that one first without slacking off and then the rest is easy.

The other thing is that I usually leave a context file (which says "you were adding X to function Y and then debugging Z") in whatever directory I'm working in so that I remember what I was doing if I was in the middle of something.

I usually just write "TODO have not done X and Y yet" into the source file that where I was last working. It's deliberately not a comment, so that I can find it by running `make` and looking for the syntax error.

haha I do that too. If I need to leave something as it is but I need to fix it, I just write what I should do but without a "//" so it doesn't compile next day when I press build without thinking.

For me is the opposite. I make a list of things I have done for the day. You know you need to push harder if your list has less than 5 items by lunch time.