Tasks out of sight are out of mind

One thing I realised when moving to an analog productivity system was I didn’t do as many tasks or feel like I had a lot to do. I’m not sure if it’s just me or the ADHD but if something is out of sight, it’s definitely out of mind. The strange thing is I’ll sometimes even forget I have a notebook at all.

A todo list isn’t a wishlist. It needs to be real, in the moment, and relevant to today.

Lee uses Things 3 exactly the same way as I do. For the last year or so I’ve had the Things 3 widget on my iPhone home screen. I also have it open throughout the day on my Mac, and have access to it on my Apple Watch.

The sync between all these is nearly flawless.

This todo app is the lifeblood of my work. If it’s not on the widget it won’t happen.

Seeing what I need to work on at all times brings a realness to it, and helps with making hard decisions to bump things to another day, or close them out entirely.

For things that are more wishlisty I’ll sometimes add them to Things, but bump them out a few days. Then, as the days rollover they come back into sight automatically, where I can then decide what to do with them. At the moment that it moves off my todo list it becomes a wishlist.

That’s fine, wishlists are important. But they should be tucked away into an Apple Note, or—and I do this all the time—simply moved into the Someday category of Things. My Someday category currently has 609 items in it that I’ll never get to. That’s fine, I didn’t delete them. They can be searched later. But they’re off the list of things that are expected.

Via ljpuk.net.