[jacquesm]

Todo lists work great! They may not work for everybody but I wouldn't know how to get through the day without my lists.

I use them pretty much like an OS would schedule tasks to avoid the pitfalls mentioned in the article. If a task is 'runnable' it will get its share because I go round-robin along the lists without preference. All this boils down to is some common sense and self discipline.

[reneherse]

Common sense and self discipline--exactly. This is where mindfulness comes into play: self monitoring your status & progress, and introspecting to be cognizant of your motivation. "Am I doing what I need to be doing, or am I distracted?" "If I'm distracted, is there some personal reason, and if so, do I need to take care of that first?" Etc.

I find a bit of meditation while planning my work for the day helps a lot.

A relevant plug, for the to-do list faithful: My brother and I are building a to-do app that helps you organize tasks, monitor procrastination, maintain mindful focus, and track time:

http://fleur.io

[prottmann]

I think in the article they try to explain that todos are OK, but todos did not motivate or give a good feeling.

Because when you finish todos, you have more new todos, a never ending story. Thats why todo-list are so negative.

[jacquesm]

Yes, when you finish todos you have more new todos. That's the nature of life, it has nothing to do with the todos. If you don't feel like doing stuff, then don't. If you do, use lists. Todo lists are positive because they also contain the (usually invisible, but you can typically show them in most todo list software) list of completed tasks and over time that list will get impressively long, much longer than the one of stuff still to do.

People that are hard to motivate will be hard to motivate whatever tool or gimmick you use. Don't blame the tool for that.

[prottmann]

Thats my experience too, if somebody don't want to use a tool, then it is irrelevant if it is the best tool in the world.

[caw]

> did not motivate or give a good feeling.

I use pen/paper todos. It feels great when I can cross one off.

If something is too large, I break out the task underneath, so I can see the larger goal I'm trying to accomplish but still have workable chunks.

[uladzislau]

What do you use for todo lists?

[jacquesm]

Depends on what kind of lists... while working on projects with hardware, shopping or not near a computer: paper & pen, stuff that has to do with a software project or organizing either a leo file (but emacs org mode would do just as well). I used taskfreak for a while and occasionally stuff things next to google calendar so the NSA has a copy without having to ask me.