PTPL 052: Simple Task Management Advice for People Who Can’t Stick to Their Lists

PLUS A bare bones time line template for my Obsidian daily notes

Plain text, Paper, Less Productivity Digest text-based image by Author

Welcome to the Plain Text, Paper — Less Productivity Digest! I’m Ellane, and this is a once-a-week taster of the unusual, the helpful, and the delightfully mundane, as well as the next instalment in my quest to future proof and simplify my digital-analog workflow.

This week — 

• To do apps and your brain — well-researched article link

• Healthy task management advice for people who can’t seem to stick to their lists

• Plain text accounting on hold — for now

• You won’t find a simpler plain text time-line than this one!

Productivity Tips and Inspiration

The complicated psychology of to do apps

Are to-do apps doing more harm than good? Clive Thompson’s WIRED article is a well-researched, fascinating insight into the way our brains cope with planning the stuff we have to get done.

Healthy task management habit advice wanted!

🌿Annette Raffan wants to develop a healthy task management habit. She’s strongly against tasks in Obsidian (that’s her happy place), and she doesn’t want Gantt charts, Todoist, TickTick, Notion, or Outlook.

If you’re a Medium member, you can check out Annette’s quirky, Shakespearean-themed article here.

What principles or ideas would you give someone who feels like they’ve wasted far too much time trying to implement approaches they can’t seem to stick to, and who is looking for a simple system with value that transcends apps?

My current all-tasks-on-one-page system is working wonderfully to keep me focused on the work rather than organising how to do the work, but I’m aware it’s not for everyone — and it may not even be for me, next year! My advice to Annette, and to anyone who finds themselves tossed to and fro on turbulent seas of task management, is to start with a piece of paper or a plain text document, and go from there.

When you begin from a point of ultimate simplicity, sometimes you discover that your true task management requirements aren’t what you thought they were. Sometimes you have to get to the bottom of the issue or issues that, system or no system, are keeping you from attacking your tasks with gusto in the first place.

For each item on your list, ask —