Just When I Think I Have The Perfect Tool
I change it. And then I change it again. And then I tweak it once more. And just when it's almost there I choose an entirely new system altogether. Welcome to the world of task managers.
And I'm not alone in the frustration that comes with this. Here's Brent Simmons over at Inessential:
Sometimes it’s as if you can almost sense its nearness — that perfect to-do system, built on OmniFocus, Things, Asana, Todoist, or one of the many others. It’ll take just a little more thinking and tweaking. Rationalize your tagging system, change how you think about due dates, maybe write some scripts or create more templates, and you’ll have it.
And it will be so glorious! And you’ll never have to deal with this again. (You swear you’re not one of those people who futz with their to-do thing just because it’s fun.)
The key here is that there is no perfect system and that resistance can be a good thing. They will all take time and effort to maintain, which is why the decision to adopt one of these systems also brings a hidden cost in time. As Brent says:
There’s no getting out of this fact: these apps are all going to take more constant input from you than you’d wish for. They don’t take away the need for some amount of self-discipline to use them effectively.