On To-Do Management

2024-09-05

About a week ago, I read the blog posts from Andy and Birchtree on To-Do Apps.

Andy wrote that he’s given up on fancy apps and just uses simple paper & pencil to organise his todos.

I’ve given up this week and gone back to paper and a pencil and I feel unbelievably organised and flexible, day-to-day.

In his reply, Birchtree points out that he read articles like this a lot before. Being just a couple of days into a new workflow barely feels odd (otherwise you wouldn’t have changed the workflow or blogged about it).

“I thought I needed a task manager, but actually pen and paper are more than enough”; “An iPad does everything I need from a computer”; “I only use the built-in apps on my phone and I’m fine”; Insert whatever example of someone moving to something that’s less powerful or less polished

I can agree with both and my personal to-do management is a mix of simple and fancy.

I use Reminders (personal) and Todo (work) for the overall todo management. Whenever I think of a task, I note it in the app - being sure that I won’t forget it or write it on a piece of paper that lands in the trash before I completed the task. I also use the app to add recurring tasks.

However, when it comes to planning the current day, I use a blank piece of paper, open the app and copy the tasks I want to do today.

This gives me the flexibility to easily add and complete tasks during the day. With the only overhead that I need to “sync back” completions to the app in the evening or the next morning.

I will continue to read Andy’s blog and see what his learnings will be. Maybe he finds a trick or two that I can add to my workflow as well.