Why do so many todo apps exist? Because they suck at their job.
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How many todo lists have you tried over the last few years?
I bet more than required.
Why do todo lists suck?
A todo list manager has a very simple task to do, list down tasks that need be done. It should serve as a note on what should be accomplished and then get out of the way for us to actually finish those tasks. So why do we try so many todo list applications?
In most cases the reason behind this is a need to feel productive. We keep trying one after the other in the hope that the next one will make us more productive.
They make us feel productive by organising our tasks, into projects, labelling them, tagging them and assigning them priorities. Every todo list application takes advantage of this. It does make us feel productive — initially. Eventually it will end it’s course and we find ourselves trying out another todo list manager in the hope that it will make us productive.
If the job of a todo list manager is to make us productive, it has failed. If the job of a todo list manager is to make us feel productive, it is an eventual failure. The job of these managers seems to become full scale project management tools, so that they get some of those sweet corporate budgets.
What makes us productive?
If you remember a time of your life when you were productive, there was most likely no todo list manager involved in it. You knew what had to be done, you listed down those tasks on a tissue, in a text editor and marked them done one after the other. There was no need to tag them, label them.
And therein lies the secret to actually being productive.
We need to be working on something we want to accomplish. No number of apps out there is going to help us with something that intrinsic. What can they do instead? They can motivate the progress by showing how much was accomplished already.
Hello, done list.
Every step regardless of it’s triviality is a step in the right direction. Logging these remind us of the small wins, and they get the wheels of progress moving — a todo list manager actually removes them, only showing much we have not accomplished.
Harvard’s Teresa Amabile found that these small wins not only make us productive but also keep us engaged and ignite joy.
John Carmack is known for keeping a .plan file of what he has accomplished everyday, logged over many years. Heard of Jerry Seinfeld’s method of not breaking the chain?
Many captains and scientists do this too. I’ve come across many good engineers who keep these on a text editor, or on a Google Doc — it works.
How do I keep it?
There’s really no one way to do it. For some it’s a Moleskine notebook, for others it’s a text editor and for few more it’s http://usedone.today.
It has two fold parts to it:
- Remind you to log it, and provide an easy way to do it.
- 2. Show you the progress of how much is already accomplished.
As long as both of these are addressed, any system that works for you is a brilliant system.
Try this method once, and see how much more is being accomplished. Go on.
