I use a mix of todo app and calendar: - todo apps have stuff that can happen at any time, some might have a deadline, but I can do them sooner if I want to -

I use a mix of todo app and calendar: - todo apps have stuff that can happen at any time, some might have a deadline, but I can do them sooner if I want to - entries in calendar represent fixed events in time - e.g. a meeting, interview I have a set of task lists grouped by topic (e.g. "recruitment", "house chores", "reading list"); each task has a description and some sort of completeness criteria. Then I have a weekly and daily lists - at the beginning of the week I take selected tasks from the various lists I need to complete this particular week and transfer to the weekly list. I pick at most 3 most important ones to complete. Every day after I wake up I take a look at my calendar and the weekly tasks list, and decide what can and needs to be done this day, and transfer tasks from the weekly list to a daily list. Again I select at most 3 most important tasks. During the day I try to block off some time for doing this stuff by having focus blocks in my calendar - e.g. I spend 30m on reviewing CVs, or 1h reviewing the backlog of my team - during this time I disable all but the most critical notifications and try to get stuff completed. After each block I gather all the things people want from me, and put it on the appropriate list. After each day and week I review if I'm happy with what I've done, and how I can improve it - for instance recently I noticed that some of my task descriptions were quite vague and did not have completeness criteria, so I'm trying to improve on that. That being said: - don't try shaming yourself if you can't complete stuff - there was a reason why it wasn't completed, try to figure out what it was and how to deal with it in the future - making yourself feel miserable doesn't solve any problems - use a process you find to suit you, don't be afraid of adjusting it - try making this stuff a habit - this way fewer things slip by - don't try to be a robot - I won't put every single thing in my life on the task list - although most work-related stuff does go through it I've been fiddling with this for about a year, and it seems to be working mostly OK - there is some room for improvement, but I'm not as predictable as computers are, do it's difficult to nail what specific actions I need to take.