PTPL 213 · The Day I Realised My Task List Was a Menu, Not a Mandate

…was the day I finally stopped over-optimising my plain text lists Moving my tasks away from apps to plain text lists was supposed to simplify everything. To take the pressure off. So why have I spent so many years optimising them? Because I didn’t understand the job they did best. Every task manager does these 3 things Before getting on with the doing, task management requires you to identify three main things — What needs to be done, broken into discrete steps When you can realistically do each thing the Order in which things should be done I was trying to get those dear little lines of text to do all of that, all at once. Okay, I admit my plain text files kind of can do all that. And every task manager that ever there was claims to be able to do it brilliantly. But I discovered that the final word on the last two items on the list are best left to a manual step, on the day in question. Task lists are a menu, not a mandate What I’m saying is that no matter what past-you instructed…