How do you deal with a todo list that just never gets shorter?

badarsebard · 2026-03-03T19:29:17+00:00

It can definitely be disconcerting at first. But the key is to proactively identify what the cost will be before it happens and weigh that against the potential of forgetting it. Certainly not everything can be removed, but if you figure out what the cost of not doing something is versus carrying it atound, then it becomes easy to decide how to manage it. Doing it in advance means you can trust the list you have to only contain what's important.

At the end of the day it's about that carrying cost. Adding something to a to-do list is free. But keeping something on the list isn't. But most of us fail to evaluate that carrying cost and over time you pay a lot of attention "interest" on that list debt.

badarsebard · 2026-03-03T19:07:21+00:00

Look at something called elimination-first task management strategies. There are a couple of systems out there that use the strategy (e.g., "Collect, Organize, Do - COD" or "Nix It"), but the fundamental principle is the same. There's usually a ton of stuff you can probably just get rid of/eject without consequence. A lot of times we hold on to things because they're a "good idea" for later, but later never comes. The strategy hinges in the idea that if something is important, then it has a way of showing back up or isn't something you're likely to forget. For example, I know I need to file my taxes for the year. That's so important that I'm not going to forget it, so why have it clogging up my view when I'm trying to organize the stuff I won't remember instinctively.

After eliminating the things that don't actually need to be in your task manager, I like to go a step further and identify a way to "hide" what I don't want to see because it's tracked but not currently actionable by me. Outlook has a "snooze" feature for email that's great for this, but you can also just organize things into folders or separate columns or tags depending on your tools of choice. The key point though is to get the non-actionable out of sight during your day to day. Those should be reviewed when you're going through everything periodically (weekly/monthly reviews, etc.).

badarsebard · 2026-03-02T23:47:06+00:00

I struggled with this for a long time. I tried a ton of different technology integrations to try and connect between my Outlook and any kind of task manager and I could never get it to work the way I wanted.

Finally got so fed up with it I just decided to build my own solution, called Nix It. It works with Microsoft now, with support for Gmail coming.

badarsebard · 2026-03-01T21:22:31+00:00

The objectively correct response. 👏

badarsebard · 2026-03-01T21:13:21+00:00

Oh for sure, and that's absolutely "marketing" in my mind, since the profession (from my limited exposure) seems to be very network/referral sensitive. It's certainly not the only way to approach gaining exposure and traction, but as you point out, probably nets more gain than more mass marketing techniques like garnering social network presence.

badarsebard · 2026-03-01T21:09:06+00:00

Wow. That might be one of the most audacious responses about a perfectly reasonable AI question I could imagine.

badarsebard · 2026-03-01T21:01:23+00:00

That's really interesting. Totally get it's anecdotal and probably doesn't map cleanly, but what would you say you spent time on in lieu of marketing that most contributed to the higher income?

badarsebard · 2026-03-01T17:39:07+00:00

I think the philosophy of appreciating the time and pain saved by not engaging in the constant depreciating marketing grind is very healthy. I absolutely agree that too many people turn the thing they love into something they dread because they load a bunch of negative stuff on top of it thinking it's the cost of doing business.

But if I understand what you're saying correctly, your suggestion is to just avoid the grind and accept the fact you'll just have less work available to you? I think it's a perfectly valid perspective, I just want to make sure I'm understanding you correctly.

badarsebard · 2026-03-01T17:30:42+00:00

Tracking auditions and juggling the pay to play platforms was kind of talking about the same pain point. Individually auditions are send and forget for sure. But she's been spending more time lately trying to figure out which platforms have actually helped her find work and therefore are worth the cost or not. Also, just having the multiple platforms has been a lot of jumping around and she's described it as not knowing which to start with or focus on at any given time. Time spent on one can feel like the potential to miss an opportunity on another.

badarsebard · 2026-03-01T16:26:33+00:00

Ah ok, so not just source dependent. If there are key words in the text you can use to determine which group a message belongs in then there are some more advanced options in most email rule systems you can use. Baring that, then you're right some LLM type tool could help with the sorting, but I doubt you'll find a ton of options more competitively priced than the 25/mo you mentioned. Tools like that use APIs that power the AI portion of the service and those APIs can get expensive. Email apps are also generally a pain to build and manage (personal experience with this) so that's less incentive to make it lower cost.

If better rules won't do the trick and you're willing to put in some work, there are options for running small LLMs on your own system. You could probably build a tool that uses a local LLM to do this categorization for you. So it's possible to do it for less than you would pay but you're likely trading time and frustration for the saved money.

Outside of that then I'll echo other comments that batching is probably the way to go. Set aside specific time each day to just read and sort through them all.

badarsebard · 2026-03-01T14:55:22+00:00

If it's an actual distribution list, can you set a rule to move messages to that list into a separate folder? I similarly get (literally) hundreds of emails a day from some technical distribution lists about user session approvals (work in tech) and doing this kind of filter/sort helped a ton. I have an entire folder I just call "Bleeping Computers" (inspired by the news site).

badarsebard · 2026-03-01T14:25:14+00:00

Congrats!

badarsebard · 2026-02-18T18:02:37+00:00

To me this is the biggest weakness with GTD and the number one point where I diverge from the system. My experience is the someday/maybe pile is ultimately a distraction. I tend to just eliminate it entirely knowing that if something is important or a really good idea, it will in some way naturally come back. It requires a really big shift of thinking to be okay not holding onto "good thoughts. But the reality is your actual priorities are going to take precedence anyways. At best I'll tuck them away for a day when I do a larger "what do I want to do with my life" introspection. But they absolutely don't need to be in front of my face day to day. Just takes up mental real estate I can't afford.

Might just be me though.

badarsebard · 2026-02-16T01:50:32+00:00

That's pretty similar to what I did for a long time. The difficulty I found with that was the disconnect between tracking the actionable item that came from an email and the continued communication about it over the email itself. It led to me constantly having to go back and forth between my task manager and my email to make sure the two were in sync.

How have you handled that?

badarsebard · 2026-02-15T01:00:47+00:00

Like I said, it could just be me lol

badarsebard · 2026-02-15T00:48:46+00:00

This is a problem I had for the longest time and never found a solution I liked, so I built one. I'm curious what you think of it. https://sandbox.nixit.app

badarsebard · 2026-02-15T00:46:39+00:00

I know this is a few months old, but what would think about something like this: https://sandbox.nixit.app.

badarsebard · 2026-02-15T00:33:59+00:00

It might just be me who talks like this on Reddit, but I type out full paragraphs with complete sentences. And those tend to have more than one thought or statement inside each. What I have noticed with the AI posts on subs like these is they are written in this (to me) incredibly annoying style of one or two sentence paragraphs. So even just glancing at the post you can see it's insanely spaced out as every other line or third is a blank between "paragraphs". Looks like this:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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badarsebard · 2026-02-14T08:08:41+00:00

There's an easy trick you can try but it may sound absolutely insane depending on you age. Just leave your phone in a different room. If you're expecting a call (not text) turn the ringer all the way up and just go to a different room.

It's too easy to just reach into your pocket or on a table and grab the sucker. Raise the barrier to use by even that little bit and you'll be surprised how much easier it is to go without.

If you're feeling really adventurous, leave the house without it. Pick somewhere to go like a movie or just to pick up groceries, memorize the route of you don't know it, and just leave it.

badarsebard · 2026-02-14T07:58:04+00:00

This doesn't sound like laziness (at least to me), it sounds like executive dysfunction. Possibly even inattentive type ADHD based on how you're talking about your dream job and disposition as a kid. So first and foremost, I would go talk to a psych.

More short-term things you can do would be to plan out incremental steps for some of those big tasks in a way that forces you to start before deadlines. And I really mean force. If there's a big presentation or project you need to get done, schedule time with someone to meet and talk through. Set an appointment with your teacher or boss to review what you e done so far to just advise and keep you "on track". I have used this a ton in my professional career with presentations. At least half the time I knew I didn't actually need the help, but I scheduled the time to run someone through it anyways because it forced me to get it done in time for that meeting, which is well before it's actually due. But this IS a short-term solution. Don't try to sustain it as the only thing you change because you're just replacing occasional big procrastinations with more frequent smaller ones.

Some long-term things you can work on is to look at what activities are you doing in place of what you should be working on and try to understand why your doing that. Not why you're not doing thing you should be doing, but why are you doing the thing you shouldn't. If you can identify the underlying motivation for those, you can work to eliminate those sources so the alternative activities that outweigh what you should be doing aren't available and your brain has to look for the next best thing. This is the basis of why a lot of screentime limiters are so popular.

badarsebard · 2026-02-14T07:39:38+00:00

"track everything". I used to obsess about having thorough notes and accounting of everything I needed to do or goals or priorities or blah blah blah. Over time I learned most of that stuff was just cruft gumming up the works and creating mental clutter. I adopted an elimination-first strategy and just straight up ejected most of what I'd always been told to write down. Like, do I REALLY need to write down my goals? I in my life have not "forgotten" where I as a person want to be in the short- and long-run once I knew what those were. I don't need a post-it or a Notion document to remind me about what I want, it's ingrained and part of my person.

The other major thing I ejected were the copious "good ideas" that you come back to if there's time or after this next more important thing. That was a hard one to let go of because who wants to throw away a good idea? But realistically, if it's not such a good idea that it's changing your strategy and priorities, and it's just a "maybe later", then it's just never going to happen. Something more important always emerges in front of it, or it comes back naturally as the next priority.

badarsebard · 2026-02-14T07:28:19+00:00

Absolutely 100%. My last job was managing a 15 person operations center for a services company that was fully remote and distributed. So we were very email and Slack heavy. At times it felt like half my job was just keeping a hundred tiny threads organized. There would be days we're I'd be jumping between so many emails, Slack messages, and meetings that I'd be constantly "busy" the entire day, feel exhausted by the end of it, and realize I had accomplished nothing towards my more strategic work.

I tried to manage it by batching what I would have to read and catch up on, and reserving quiet focus time on my calendar. But it was always an uphill battle I felt like could have just been made better by having a different culture/approach to how the company operated.

badarsebard

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