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1/ Applying agile principles to productivity systems, I think the concept of a "todo" is poison, and looking at a large pool of captured "todos" is insane. Every day, without trying, I generate at least a week of "todos"
2/ My strong inclination to view my "todo list" as "things I must do to be ok" is utterly depressing - because I can't do all those things. Viewing it as "a backlog of work" is equally bad, since I associate being "behind" on "work" with basically feeling like garbage.
3/ Viewing a list of captured task ideas as a do-or-die set of promises is not only foul but inaccurate & unnecessary. ***Instead, what if we reframe "todos" as "ideas"**. Because really, that's all they are.
4/ If a "todo" is actually an "idea", it's natural to ask: "What is it an idea about?". Answer: "It's an idea about how to advance one of my goals." Naturally I will have many such ideas about how to progress on various aspects of each of my goals.
5/ My task when executing is not "do all ideas for how to advance all goals". It's "Pick a goal, pick the best idea (whether from a list of previous ideas, or fresh from top of mind), and use it to advance the goal, while learning and self-correcting."
6/ (These thoughts partly inspired by "Getting Results the Agile Way: A Personal Results System for Work and Life", currently free on Kindle Unlimited amzn.to/2Oin3Vt, as well as a lifetime of struggle with task management & GTD systems).
