Todo apps are meant for robots

GTD has a lot of solutions for various types of todo list problems, but then again, you have to be a quite conscientious person to follow through on all of the details of it. At which point you probably have no problem with plain scribbles on some loose paper. My wife makes todo lists all the time (like, she's taking to someone and while she's talking she'll pull out some paper and write things down completely unrelated to the conversation, without skipping a beat) but she's very conscientious about actually doing those tasks, so she doesn't have a need for more complicated systems than small piles of papers with things that need to be done.

Whereas I make lists with breakdowns and several dimensions of categories and preferably according to a clearly defined, all-encompassing system, and it needs to work on all devices and include everything from what I need to buy for dinner tonight to my life goals, and then those notes become a job in themselves and I say fuck this and throw them all out and try the same thing again 6 months later. I'd much rather be like my wife.

Keeping habits and todo/tasks list separately helps me prevent the latter from monopolizing habit time.

ps. Flat Habits is backed by org (if that's important to you), but this is purely an internal detail if you just want a simple app.

- closed loops for stuff that would otherwise occupy my thoughts while programming

- understanding and aplication of what makes me either not start or think about something (project) constantly

- ability to drop and return to it and just continue

- differentiation between what is a must do and nice to do

- separating emotional context for a protocol one ( usefull for things that upset me but must be dealt with)

Bad things

- overusing the system as it is very effective and placing way of the mark projects that you wish to do and that drag on to irrelevance, especially the inbox filled with thoughts rather than something useful.

- it requires at least weekly maintenance, especially when the structure is new to the user

- lists can get convoluted , amended by understanding that you can and should add remove entire lists or even make lists context based.

Bad parts can be overcame but it requires a deeper understanding of gtd and knowing that your gtd flow is ment to be upgraded, reworked and much less structural and rigid in some places. I am currently at my v2 for gtd and it is much easier to maintain while providing me with pretty much same benefits, there is going to be v3.

Overall it helped me immensely to clear my ram when working and for that at least it is worth it

Maybe a lot of people just read the short blog posts on the internet for how to setup a tool to implement his system. A lot of the ones I’ve seen (with the notable exception of one I found showing how to implement it in Org-mode) get the methodology completely wrong. So maybe it’s just the bad examples are copied?

People should just buy and read his book. It was updated a few years ago for the modern world (but I guess even that edition is now probably dated). Also there’s even a workbook available too to help drill it in for people that prefer that way of examples.

I’ve not yet found a decent alternative. I think a better book could be written on it though. I think the system could be explained in fewer words making it accessible to more people. David’s book is a good read but you probably have to be very serious about fixing this part of your life to put in the effort required to understand and implement it.