I too, have tried countless amount of to-do apps, and none of them stuck with me for more than a week or so. It's frustrating. I look around me and see so many

I too, have tried countless amount of to-do apps, and none of them stuck with me for more than a week or so. It's frustrating. I look around me and see so many people use to-do lists, and it seems to work for them. So why then, does it not work for me? I have no idea, but I have more or less abandoned trying to use a to-do list at all, simply because I work perfectly fine without one, so why change that? Jeff mentioned 3 things, but I give myself a little more flexibility with that. Sometimes I can have 4 or even 5 if it's really necessary. But these are events or tasks that are really important to me. In fact, my mental to-do list usually takes at least a week or two to get fully "checked". I wake up in morning reminding myself of the 3~5 most important things within my next week or week and a half. Things like securing a major contract, giving the best man's speech at my friend's wedding, maybe even writing a blog post (or simply coming up with ideas for one). Although I've been incredibly busy lately and have had no time to blog, I keep putting that on my mental to-do list every week, and it becomes part of the way I live. I start to notice things I want to talk about, give it some time to circulate in my head, then either discard it or write down the general idea for when I have time to write it. This works SO much better for me than the alternative. How do I keep track of everything else? Simple. I make them routines. If I want to dedicate a year to learning chess, I dedicate time to it every week and treat it like any other important event in my life; it cannot be cut out unless it's absolutely critical. Having routines like these help me a lot with managing stress and frees my brain to consciously work on other things. Everything else that does not fall into the routine category or my top 3~5 to-dos is simply not important enough, and I cut them.