I find a physical notepad and a pen to be perfect for prioritizing and recording to-dos. Not sure why it needs to be "optimized" any further.

A lot of the optimizations I found (in taskwarrior) was allowing the app to figure out what I needed to do next. Due dates and expected duration and priority...all done programmatically.

I really only needed that for work, as my personal life is much easier managed with pencil and paper.

Agreed. I thought it would not be the case but I’ve been bullet journaling for about 6 months and it’s been revolutionary.

On Mac, NotePlan does a decent job of distilling out the most important bits of bullet journaling--searchable markdown-style tasks and notes arranged on a calendar, with a bit of sugar to allow moving tasks from one day to another. It's very lightweight but has replaced my homegrown rapid-logging.

It's a habit I picked up very early on when I was doing IT internships in college and it's so effective I can't see myself ever making checklists any other way.

You have to carry it around if you want your task list to be anywhere but in just one spot.

from my perspective, as soon as my todo list is digitized it is hidden from me. And as soon as it is hidden I forget to maintain it.

I agree, and the act of carrying a notepad around is not usually an issue for me anyway. I keep my work checklist at work and bring it home on days when I work remotely. I also keep checklists at home for non work stuff. Shopping lists are usually torn out of home checklists, brought with me, and then disposed of.

There's also something really gratifying about physically checking stuff off of a list.

The truism "out of sight out of mind"

It's surprisingly true. To the point I noticed that in times of stress, I would simply not look at whatever productivity tool I've been using. I found myself no longer invoke org agendas. No longer opening the paper notebook with tasks. Hell, I found my eyes glazing over the whiteboard with a list of tasks I put there the previous night.

Semi-conscious avoidance is a terrifying thing.

That's an underlying issue (PEBCAK) which can be mitigated with mindfulness. The same could happen with an abundance of p&p notes. Someone who claims it doesn't happen w/their p&p notes, why would it happen with digital ones? Because the storage is easier and accessible (cloud in on your mobile in your pocket)? But an agenda full with notes isn't hard to carry around. My mother has been doing that for ages. She writes her passwords in her agenda, for example, and she still can't find them because its not well-logically mindfully structured. That wouldn't be solved by digitisation. Its PEBCAK all over.

So what is the solution?

I dont know ‘the’ solution but, i can tell you what has been working for me for a year now.

1. Pocket notebook (physical) for this week’s todos and random ideas

2. sticky notes for chores and mindless lists

3 whiteboard for half baked ideas

4. google keep for digital content like images, bookmarks, phone numbers, shared lists

5. Notational velocity with notes organized in Noguchi’s chronological order.

I have a minor tweak in this where i paste sticky notes within the physical notebook so i can move them around.

There is not one solution but I can tell what works for me (and is based on scientific evidence) is mindfulness, exercise, and an anti depressant (Prozac). YMMV.

My list is a widget on my phone's home screen - unavoidable.

I do:

- 1. Checklist on paper

- 2. Take a photo of it

Sometimes:

- 3. Rewrite at destination

Always:

- 4. Rewrite every few days

Yeah I do a similar thing except with a dry erase marker on the refrigerator. Being able to open a photo of my to-do without going through some stupid app saves a ton of aggravation.

So set a daily reminder to check the list?

I'm not OP, but I find I ignore such reminders, but don't ignore the paper in front of me.

I think the reason is that the phone sends many notifications, and at least on iphone it's hard to make the todo list reminder that much more prominent. Also mentally it feels like just another phone task.

Also putting stuff on paper forces sorting. I keep larger lists on digital, but I find for daily paper has a bigger impact.

I know we have this desire for a single task list but in practice I don't find it that useful. My task list at work would get in the way when I go to the shops. My task list at home is only needed there, I need to be reminded to pay bills when I'm at home and not when I'm at work. Even between different projects at work and home different task lists can be good.

A physical notepad is pretty easy to forget or lose.

Is it? I mean, I guess perhaps so - but I find a physical artifact far easier to remember than "must open app X/Y/Z" on all my devices. Like my glasses or wallet or keys or phone, it has a literal presence. In 12 years of carrying a notepad and pen around, all over the world, I've literally never forgotten it once.

Make it task #1 not to lose it.

For todos, I love flightstrip racks. Yes, it’s ATC gear, but man it’s so satisfying to mark a task done by moving a series of plastic tokens. https://www.google.fr/search?tbm=isch&q=flightstrip+rack

Wow I didn't expect this link to be to a physical product. I'm very curious, please tell me more and how to get into this approach/what it's best for.

99.999999% of the purpose of any todo list process (app or otherwise) is a prompt for your memory (whether its scheduled or not).

Scheduling and maintaining is a discipline that doesnt always come naturally. And is largely redundant.

Habitica is an interesting suggestion, thanks.

I've had good luck with "todo list" and the "X effect" thing (basically just streaks - X out a calendar day for each time you do a daily task". Everything else, without exception, has been enough work to feel like a secondary task which I then quit doing. This might be a tool light enough to digitize those benefits without being a burden.

I used habitica for about a year and loved it. However, at some point my character was maxed-out and there was no incentive to continue (quest-events were a bit lame). I tried starting from scratch with a new character and quickly got bored. Maybe I should try it again, if they have improved it.

This happened to me as well. I just recently started again, for my 3rd time?

Unfortunately I think the key is to find a good active party to keep you busy. So far I haven't really found one unfortunately.

Yup. I'm great at putting items on RememberTheMilk or Outlook or Google Calendar or Google Tasks or iCloud Notes or a whiteboard, but REALLY BAD at using the same system consistently, let alone actually checking the list ("hey, I'm bored, what should I do now?")

Personally, I have a reminder on my phone set every morning that tells me to review the list. Before I did this, I always had this gut feeling that I had forgot something even though I was very strict about always adding a task for everything.

I hate this app. It's extremely unresponsive, doesn't know how to dismiss notifications properly, and is laggy on mobile. Some pages that are accessible from the web view don't work at all on the iOS version. And I'm 99% sure that the damage-calculation hits aren't being calculated properly.

Yes, I know it's open source. I still dislike these aforementioned aspects of it, though.

Yeah the desktop web version is a massively better experience (though not stellar either, tbh). It says something that it's still a good tool despite those shortcomings

The desktop web version is indeed far superior. The Android version works okay but it's also laggy and some notifications are missing.

I tried it yesterday while looking for an app that would track "on a scale of 1-5 how well did I do X today". I settled on KeepTrack, but it doesn't have habitica's style. Maybe habitica encourages taking the habit seriously without taking myself too seriously.

I like https://www.askmeevery.com/. It just sends you an email and you reply. And if the reply is numerical, it'll generate a plot and statistics for you.

that might work for me, I have a good gamified response usually.