[mcguire]

The best system I came up with:

1. Get a small spiral-bound notebook, say 3x5 or whatever is sitting in the supply cabinet.

2. Write today's date on the top of the first page. Write each task on one line on the page. (You only need enough detail to remember what the task is.)

3. As you complete tasks, draw a line through them. It's more satisfying that check marks or whatever.

4. As you add tasks, just write them on the today page.

5. Or, if you know you aren't going to get to them until tomorrow, write tomorrow's date at the top of the next page and put them down there.

6. Or, if you know you can't get to it until Monday, write the dates on the pages in between, one page per day, until you get to Monday and write it there.

7. At the end of the day, look at the list of tasks you didn't get to. Carry them over to tomorrow's page and mark them out on today's. It feels great.

8. Try not to carry too many over to any particular day; after two or three, put the rest on the next day's page. Some days I'm only good for one or two things.

It's all about a) making sure you remember things, and b) making sure you aren't overwhelmed by what you have to do at any one time. (I almost never move a task up.)

[jperras]

I tend to avoid self-promotion, but this was just too on the nose to ignore: what you've described is almost quite literally the functionality of https://teuxdeux.com.

We like to say that our biggest competition is pencil & paper.

[unexistential]

After years of trying to be productive with to-do apps, I've found that nothing beats the flexibility of plain old pen and paper. Even analog systems like Analog or Bullet Journal impose rules of varying inflexibility, and that made them very unappealing, for me at least.

I guess this is because people have different ways of thinking about goals, tasks and timeframes. For me what works best is a 'week todo' that contains coarser/larger tasks and a daily todo that contains more granular tasks, often sub-tasks of the weekly ones. Adopting this method has made me more productive than I've been in years.

[mrlemke]

I've done exactly this and it works well. However, I've tweaked a couple things over time.

1. Tasks not completed may carry over to the next day, or a backlog if the next day already had something planned in my calendar.

2. Minimal markup to backlog tasks, such as a hard due date (i.e. other people expect it done by this date) and/or an urgency marking.

3. Keep the list on my phone so it is always with me. Having it digital reduces busy work (such as moving tasks between today and the backlog). I don't like using my phone so I don't tend to get sidetracked, thus YMMV with this.

[KennyBlanken]

Ah, but that wouldn't let someone charge a subscription of $10/month for thirty small pieces of paper.

For comparison's sake: a small-ish clairfontaine cloth-bound notebook costs about $10

[rozhok]

I've used exactly same system for more than a year, and now still using it combined with digital app.