I Stopped Using Every Todo App. Then I Looked at My Notebook.
I am sure I am not the first one to write these thoughts, but here goes. For years, I chased the perfect productivity system.
I tried Wunderlist (now MS Todo). I tried Notion. I tried Things, and a handful of apps whose names I’ve already forgotten. Each one promised clarity. Each one delivered, for about two weeks, the satisfying illusion of control — color-coded categories, priority levels, recurring reminders, project hierarchies. And then, quietly, I stopped opening them.
It wasn’t that the apps were bad. It was that they asked too much of me before I could even begin.
Somewhere in between abandoning one system and adopting the next, I noticed something. My notebook — a plain, unassuming thing I’d been carrying for years — never failed me.
Not because it was sophisticated. Because it wasn’t.
I’d open it to a fresh page and write things down. Not in any particular order. Not sorted by work or personal, urgent or non-urgent. Just a list of things that existed in my life that needed doing. Call the insurance company. Finish the proposal. Book the flight. Fix the leaking tap. All of it, together, the way it actually lives in my head.
Through the day, I’d glance at the list. When something got done, I’d cross it out. That small act — pen through a line — was quietly one of the most satisfying things I did all day.
No categories. No reminders. No system. Just a list, a pen, and my own judgment about what to do next.
But notebooks have one honest flaw.
Items drift. Something that mattered — that I fully intended to get to — would sit near the top of the page while newer entries piled up below it. Not forgotten exactly, but fading. Losing urgency through sheer proximity to everything else. Until one day I’d flip back and see it staring at me, untouched, quietly patient in a way that felt like an accusation.
My workaround was manual and a little embarrassing. I’d cross the old item out and write it again at the bottom of the list. Fresh entry. Back in sight. Back in line.
It worked. But it required me to remember to do it, which is the opposite of what a system should ask of you.
I’ve thought a lot about why the notebook worked when the apps didn’t, and I think it comes down to something simple: the notebook made no assumptions about my life.
It didn’t need me to decide upfront whether something was a “work task” or a “personal task.” It didn’t ask me to assign a due date to things that didn’t have one. It didn’t sort my intentions into projects and sub-projects and priority tiers. It just held everything I told it to hold, and trusted me to figure out the rest.
The apps I tried were built on a different philosophy — that the path to getting things done is better organization. More structure. Smarter categorization. I’ve come to believe that’s wrong, at least for how my mind works. The friction of maintaining the system was always quietly competing with the energy needed to actually do the things.
A list doesn’t compete with you. It just waits.
There’s something else the notebook taught me, though it took a while to name it.
Time itself is information.
When something has been on a list for a day, that means one thing. When it’s been there for two weeks, that means something entirely different. The notebook doesn’t tell you this — you have to notice it yourself. But that passage of time is real signal. It tells you that something kept getting passed over. That you kept choosing other things instead. That maybe it needs to move back to the front of the line, or maybe it needs to be crossed out not because it’s done, but because it was never really going to happen.
A good system would surface that signal for you. Not with an alarm. Not with a guilt-inducing notification. Just a gentle visual shift — the way an aging order at a restaurant counter might start to stand out on the screen, calling for attention without anyone having to say a word.
I don’t think productivity is a solved problem. I think most of us have just made our peace with systems that half-work.
The notebook half-works too. But it half-works in a way that feels honest — in a way that matches how attention and intention actually function in a real day, with real interruptions and shifting energy and the constant negotiation between what matters and what’s urgent.
What I’ve started to wonder is whether the right digital tool isn’t a smarter, more powerful version of every app I’ve tried — but a simpler, more faithful version of the notebook. One that holds everything without judging it. One that lets time do some of the work. One that asks very little of you, so you have more left over for the actual doing.
I’m working on finding out.
If this resonated with you, I’d love to know how you manage your list — the real one, not the idealized version. Hit reply.