The blog

A com­mon struc­ture pit­fall is that we try a new to-do-list tool for a while but then stop using it, where­upon we try anoth­er one, and another …

The con­se­quence of jump­ing between tools will be that we spread notes on what we need to do in more places than we should, since we have a few tasks here, a few made note of there, and some in sev­er­al old apps we test­ed. This was exact­ly what we want­ed to get away from and find a solu­tion to. It was to sort the mess out that we tried a new tool in the first place.

”Some­where there is an app for us”, said Sond­heim… well, almost
Every time we notice how we once again were unsuc­cess­ful in own­ing the tool we are try­ing out, and stop using it, we feel dis­cour­aged and think ​”Is there no app that real­ly suits me? Every­body else seems to have found some­thing that works for them. Per­haps there is some­thing wrong with me or how I work?”.

No need to go there. You might just be try­ing the tool in the wrong way. You see, it is easy to just add some small­er, unim­por­tant tasks to the tool since we are just try­ing it out. We only add a few because we do not want to risk for­get­ting or miss­ing tasks while try­ing some­thing new. That would be dev­as­tat­ing! So there­fore we add tasks that we are not too wor­ried about los­ing. These might be tasks we have had on our list for a while, that have been on our mind for a long time, and which we keep post­pon­ing, that have turned into real breed­ing grounds for a bad conscience.

All of your bad con­science in one place
And so the test­ing begins. The only thing we see when open­ing the tool is a list of all the things that are giv­ing us a bad con­science, that we have left unat­tend­ed for too long already. Now every time we open the tool we get a knot in our stom­ach, and we feel our stress lev­els ris­ing. We start avoid­ing the app, and final­ly when we have had enough, we remove the tool or the short­cut. And we con­firm anoth­er defeat.

So instead, when you are try­ing out some­thing new, put your most impor­tant, most rel­e­vant and cur­rent tasks in the tool so that it becomes rel­e­vant too, instead of only con­tain­ing of a bunch of heavy ​”have-tos”.

Do this
If what I just described rings a bell and you hon­est­ly want to give a tool that you aban­doned a new chance, then do the following:

1. Open the tool or app again, which prob­a­bly means re-install it, reac­ti­vate your account or sim­ply open the list you once aban­doned. (If you want to try anoth­er tool instead, I have com­piled a list of a few good ones here)


2. Now choose one of two ways to approach this:
   • Either you add all your to-do-tasks to the revived tool so that it becomes your **only** list. Sure, it will take a while to enter all your tasks, but it will be worth it because you might have found a tool that will save you lots of time and trou­ble for a long while to come.
   • Or, if you still just want to give it a light go, add the tasks that con­cern some­thing that is of utter­most impor­tance to you at the moment. It might be a project that is at a cru­cial stage, some­thing you need to work hard on to fin­ish soon, or an area in which you can­not allow your­self to fall behind right now.


3. Put aside the oth­er list (or lists) you have been work­ing with some­where where they are a bit hard to access, and put the new tool ​”on top” some­how so that it nat­u­ral­ly becomes your first choice when reach­ing for your to-do-list.


4. When new things that you will not do right away land on your desk, enter them as new tasks in the new list and then you are off to a good start.

Whole­heart­ed­ly instead of halfhearted
If you try a new to-do-list tool whole­heart­ed­ly and with an hon­est inten­tion of giv­ing it a chance, rather than half­heart­ed­ly and as a grave­yard for the things that give you a bad con­science, chances increase that you get used to it faster and enjoy work­ing with it. Instead of miss­ing out on valu­able func­tions and fea­tures just because you did not uti­lize it the right way, you will take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ties the rapid devel­op­ment in tech­nol­o­gy presents, even in the area of to-do-list tools.

What have you found?
Have you tried some new tool or app recent­ly, and if so, what is your opin­ion on it? Leave a com­ment to share your tip.