Anyone else have any tricks they use to avoid procrastinating?
-mouser
Check out WorkFlowy or Dynalist, as it sounds like what you're describing is what those two services make their key feature (besides having some other goodies that enhance the experience, such as having a dark theme or being able to zoom in on one task at a time, add notes to an item, tags etc.).
One downside of an ever-expanding list is that while it may help you get ideas out of your head (and thus not forget them), it may also compel you to complete tasks that maybe should have never been done.
Also, an ever-expending list can become a source of anxiety, as it may suggest that there are more tasks than time etc.
What I have learnt from capturing all my todos in WorkFlowy for years is that now I have thousands of items that I know will never get done. It just brought home to me the fact that the name of the game is not "what to do" but "what not to do."
So the main problem is the quality of the judgement involved in prioritising. It's all too well to capture, list and order all tasks. But the main issue is to decide what to do now, today, by making very painful decisions about what not to do, temporarily, and most likely permanently.
The pain comes from the fact that maybe your superiors are forcing you to do the things you prioritised not to do, or you have to delegate them to others, who will in turn resist or cause grief in other ways.
Any tendency towards perfectionism adds another layer of pain. Part of the judgement is also about how well does the task really needs to be accomplished, as any improvement towards perfection costs time and energy. I think the solution is called satisficing.
I guess what I'm getting at is that while tools for listing and organising and managing are important, ultimately the capability to make good judgements about prioritising is what separates super successful people from those less so. It's quite possible that those possessing such superior judgement skills might get by with a pen and paper notebook.
And of course if one is lacking in the judgement department (like yours truly), then that person might be particularly susceptible to getting carried away with various software tools for to-do lists, instead of honing the judgement skills.
With that, I'm placing an order for OnTask. Many thanks for the tip, @wraith808.
P.S. Actually I tried to create software versions of OnTask in the past, by combining Samurize and Desktop Coral to create a strip on the top of my screen with the todo tasks, as well as a list that shows up as my wallpaper. But it was too tedious to keep them updated, and they either cut into the screen real estate or got covered up by other windows, so eventually my eyes just glossed over them.