Dr Andus wrote:

I've tried many todo apps over the years, and I ended up having the same
problem with all of them, namely, that after a while it was hard to see
the forest for the trees.

But even that metaphor breaks down here, as I could see the forest of
todos, so that wasn't the problem.

Maybe the problem was that it was getting increasingly harder to see
which ones were the important trees, as they were getting lost in the
ever-expanding forest, and far too much time was spent on forest
management to find the important trees.

Then I came across a study somewhere which said that the busiest and
most productive managers (CEOs and presidents etc.) only use a calendar
to manage their todos because only what can get done at a specific point
in time is worth focusing on (i.e. is important enough).

So the essential skill here is not task management (and forest
management), but task selection, i.e. prioritisation, and choosing tasks
and scheduling them in a calendar and getting them done is what matters.

Now it's possible that this is only valid for those in senior
management, and if one is an underling, then we are tasked to manage the
forest, so that we can suggest important trees to senior management.

But I feel there is a learning point there that the higher level skill
is to learn how to select (prioritise) important and urgent tasks and
then focusing on getting them done (by scheduling them in a calendar),
and forest management leads to stagnation or at least it's a lower level
skill, almost an admin skills vs. the management or leadership skills of
prioritisation.

For the last several years I was using a combination of WorkFlowy (for
capturing tasks, managing the forest) and Google Calendar to manage my
affairs. But my WorkFlowy has grown into a giant forest of captured
tasks most of which are ultimately probably pointless and useless as
they never got scheduled because they turned out not to be important or
urgent.

Enter RoamResearch, which has emerged as the magic solution to the
forest management problem, and for me therefore is the absolute best
todo management software I have ever used.

The key feature is the automatically appearing daily page, which forces
you to review the previous day's undone tasks, to evaluate whether they
should be transferred over; so it's a forced moment of reflection,
evaluation, and prioritisation every day. (I imagine this is very
similar to the bullet journal method.)

Although I still end up with some tasks that I've been rolling over for
weeks or months, it also forces me to recognise that some of these are
no longer important or will never be done and can be forgotten about.

But it also helps me never miss anything important, because it forces me
to encounter again tasks that I scheduled for the future, when the given
daily note appears on its assigned date. I still use Google Cal to
schedule tasks in a calendar format, which just adds another moment of
reflection and prioritisation, when tasks get mapped against the
available time on a given day or week.

So when it comes to a todo system or software, the key features to
evaluate would be how it deals with the growing forest problem, how it
helps prioritization, how it helps scheduling, getting things done, and
reminding of future tasks.

Creating an audit trail is also important (and for this Roam is also
excellent, as there is a record of each day that's passed, and the
internal linking can ensure the monitoring of connections between past,
present, and future tasks and events).

Now we get to the heart of the matter - prioritization. This is the key for me as I am frequently at bandwidth overload. I used to use tags to prioritize and "pull" out tasks that needed to be done and would only use programs that offered reasonable tagging features. I then found that good search and filtering started appearing in programs which made tagging even better, especially when a search/filter could be saved. Now we have programs that are highly customizable where you can create your own fields, and I combine that with the ability to create my own views (something I originally implemented in MLO and now use in Clickup). The ability to quickly switch views is very helpful, and I have a project view, a priority view and a calendar view (for my personal and home lists).

I am still sorting out Clickup at work so I have been using it in conjunction with Kanbanflow. Clickup holds all of the data and tasks/subtasks and Kanbanflow allows me to quickly prioritize and jot down items as they arise. The board has four columns - Now, Next, Later, and Scratchpad. This keeps me from being overwhelmed and with the use of just a few colors to code things, I can decide what I want to tackle and see where it is as. This can easily be replaced by almost any kanban board, but Kanbanflow is so dead simple that it is almost frictionless in use for me. My goal is to eventually try to move this into Clickup, but I am not sure if I can set it up as I wish. But, trying to is teaching me a lot, so as long as it does not get out of hand, I am okay.

Finally, at work they are rolling out MS Planner/Todo/Tasks since we are an all Microsoft shop. I find them a bit too simple for my needs, but I did find it interesting that Microsoft has incorporated the concept of prioritizing in the system. I cannot remember which of the three requires you to rebuild your daily task list each day so you can start with a clean slate. I understand what they are trying to accomplish, but having to rebuild each day would drive me crazy. My 3+1 board at Kanbanflow is much easier.

--Ken