One of my early frustrations with Microsoft's "To-do" app was that it discarded my "today" tasks every day. But now I love that it does this, for the reasons the author describes.
I was used to apps like Asana that would just let things sit there and accumulate and fester. It made me hate how much I wasn't getting done every day. One or two tasks a day piling up over the course of many days just grows into a mountain of shame, and as the author says, it builds this "UGH field" around it that makes me not want to look at it at all, much less try to wade through it. The system was hurting more than helping, really.
I started using To-Do because we recently switched to Microsoft at work, and I'm trying to embrace the ecosystem or whatever. And what was an annoying deficiency (why can't this crappy MS app do what I want) has become a huge relief.
Automatically having my day reset every day has helped me feel more like I can actually get through most of what I realistically intend to do in a day. I take a minute in the morning to throw stuff on the list, MS does helpfully suggest some things (presumably using something they now call "AI"), and then I start working down it. At the end of the day, anything I didn't get to -- honestly, anything that wasn't as important as I thought it would be that day -- is gone. The next day, I start fresh. Re-focus, re-prioritize, and start executing. Everything still gets done, but my focus is on the day ahead rather than days past. And no "ugh field."
I would note that my approach to projects with teams is different, of course. All of those tasks will eventually need to get done, so it's not helpful to let things disappear. But where this does apply is in how much a given contributor wants to bite off in a day. The backlog on a project is the backlog, no getting around it, but a tighter focus each day on whatever's realistic, 3-5 tasks probably, relieves a lot of tension that helps work be more effective, I find.
Last comment, I love that the author also puts things on the list just to scratch them off. I picked up this habit somewhere long ago. It seems silly to do something, then put it on the list, then just scratch it right off, but it has the real effect of notching another task done. Helps limit the days where you feel like you didn't actually do anything, those yak-shaving days. You can look at the "completed" tab and see that no, you did actually do stuff. Another source of shame neutralized.
> One of my early frustrations with Microsoft's "To-do" app was that it discarded my "today" tasks every day. But now I love that it does this, for the reasons the author describes.
To-do is surprisingly great. It's my GTD tool of choice at the moment.
They change things, though, and you can't switch a setting. For some time they stopped adding tasks with due date on the current day to the "My day" smart list.
It makes sense if you think about it in terms of what they wanted "My day" to be. Adding things to "My day" should be a conscious choice.
But it was a change, and it's very nice to have due tasks automatically added. They changed it back after a few weeks, thankfully.
I really like "To-do" and am so glad it's integrated into Outlook's Mac client now. I wish there was a way to show all tasks, regardless of their list/categorization.
As it stands, this really stops me from using separate lists for timebound tasks. I only use them for long-term planning/blue sky stuff.
I was used to apps like Asana that would just let things sit there and accumulate and fester. It made me hate how much I wasn't getting done every day. One or two tasks a day piling up over the course of many days just grows into a mountain of shame, and as the author says, it builds this "UGH field" around it that makes me not want to look at it at all, much less try to wade through it. The system was hurting more than helping, really.
I started using To-Do because we recently switched to Microsoft at work, and I'm trying to embrace the ecosystem or whatever. And what was an annoying deficiency (why can't this crappy MS app do what I want) has become a huge relief.
Automatically having my day reset every day has helped me feel more like I can actually get through most of what I realistically intend to do in a day. I take a minute in the morning to throw stuff on the list, MS does helpfully suggest some things (presumably using something they now call "AI"), and then I start working down it. At the end of the day, anything I didn't get to -- honestly, anything that wasn't as important as I thought it would be that day -- is gone. The next day, I start fresh. Re-focus, re-prioritize, and start executing. Everything still gets done, but my focus is on the day ahead rather than days past. And no "ugh field."
I would note that my approach to projects with teams is different, of course. All of those tasks will eventually need to get done, so it's not helpful to let things disappear. But where this does apply is in how much a given contributor wants to bite off in a day. The backlog on a project is the backlog, no getting around it, but a tighter focus each day on whatever's realistic, 3-5 tasks probably, relieves a lot of tension that helps work be more effective, I find.
Last comment, I love that the author also puts things on the list just to scratch them off. I picked up this habit somewhere long ago. It seems silly to do something, then put it on the list, then just scratch it right off, but it has the real effect of notching another task done. Helps limit the days where you feel like you didn't actually do anything, those yak-shaving days. You can look at the "completed" tab and see that no, you did actually do stuff. Another source of shame neutralized.