There is no denying the power of making lists. Lists focus your mind and make it clear what needs to be completed within your project.

So if a) lists are good and b) apps exist, you must need an app for making lists! Right?

That’s what I thought, too, as I tried every to-do app for Mac and iPhone that was released over a span of several years. (Disclosure: this was a few years ago. There are now far too many tasklist apps to keep track of. You’d need a to-do list just to keep track of which ones to try. But I digress.) Each had its cool features that really, truly promised to finally let you start getting things done (GTD™).

Except that nope, that didn’t happen. My productivity continued at roughly the same pace, and the act of typing lists with checkboxes seemed to be about the same experience in each app I tried.

Naturally, I chalked that up to those apps being designed for a different target market that I was not a part of, and I’d try a different one. If the app had a designery homepage with a video proclaiming its Greatest Features Ever, I was sold. Imagine my disappointment when I found out my shiny new app allowed you to make lists by typing words, the same as all the rest.

You’re smart, so you’ve picked up on the snark. Making lists of what you need to do is a great thing. And if you’ve got any app that lets you do that, you’re set.

I’m a developer, so the best to-do list I’ve found so far is a simple list in a code comment at the top of the primary file I’m working in. It features to-do lists, infinite nesting (!), priority tracking, reordering, and even versioning.

My lists look like this:

- Needs to be done
X Is done
! High priority
? Low priority or unclear
D No longer needs to be done ("deleted")
W(design) Waiting on other people and (who it is)
  — Nested to-do item
  X Nested done item
    — Even deeper nested to-do item (this is infinite. so.)

Reordering involves cutting a line and pasting it elsewhere, and version control is automatic since it’s part of your repo. And — please be sure you are sitting down for this part — you can search your list via cmd-F.

If you don’t want your list in your code (or you’re not a coder), use TextEdit or Notepad. You’ll lose version control, but you’ll gain colors! If you want to share your list between your computer and phone, use the Notes app or TextEdit/Notepad + Dropbox. You get the idea. The point is that an app that most likely came with your devices is perfect for your lists.