Analog vs. digital

My devices are very well organized:

  • I have no desktop icons
  • I delete stuff all the time
  • my backups are 200MB small
  • I don't open more than ~5 browser tabs and close them after the task at hand ...

But sometimes I struggle with my todo lists. Yes, I have multiple lists.

I write down stuff on my computers. On my smartphones. On paper. On a whiteboard.

And suddenly, I have 4 files of todos, sometimes in a general folder, sometimes in a project folder.

Weeks later, I find these notes and feel dumb and guilty.

This time, I took one step back and asked myself "Why do I struggle?".

And the answer is: Because I have multiple sources of incoming todos, but they are distributed all over the place.

So how could I solve this challenge?

Digital: I could write down my todos on 5 devices and keep it in sync. I tried this multiple times. And I always failed after some weeks or months. The biggest problem was the "flat hierarchy" on my devices: With a dozen of programs on my devices, a todo-list is not noticeable. It just sits there until I forget it. And what happens when I'm not in-front of a device?

Analog: I could write down my todos on a piece of paper. This is what I currently try to implement. My stack looks like this: the cardboard packaging of an old smartphone, some post-its, a pencil.

Pieter Levels has a simple explanation.

Let's see how this will work out!