I could not disagree more strongly with this post. For me, managing a todo list has been the single greatest boon to my own productivity and self-management I have ever come across.
That is not to say I think most or any todo list applications are worth while - I think the vast majority of them are really terrible as they are far too complex or constraining, require too much overhead to do the simple things like creating a task or changing a task status, are too opinionated about how you deal with your todo items (like forcing schedules, reminders or due dates), lack hierarchical structure and lack any kind of free-form input.
The best (and only) worthwhile app that I have ever encountered is not even a todo list app - it is simply a Google Docs document that I leave open in my browser on various computers. I use whatever kind of free form structure I want to dump my thoughts and "todo" things that I feel like at the time - and annotate task status with free text tags and tokens that suit me as I go. Various parts of the documents will at times look like todo lists, plans, schedules, itineraries, work-flows, inventories, idea-lists, collections and more - and it is constantly evolving as the state of my work and activities evolve. Important, current stuff goes at the top - for example my first two blocks are titled "Appointments" (dont want to forget those!) and "Today" (what do I absolutely need to do today). Going down the blocks tend to reduce in priority/importance - for example my very last block is called "Learning" which is a list of various things that I would like to learn more of when I have time (not that learning isn't important, but it is a long-term background activity that I don't need to be reviewing every day).
If I have some thoughts or plans that I feel are important, but I dont want to focus on them now, I will just dump them in the document and move on to something else. Later I can come back and review that dump, maybe translate it into actual todo item or evolve it into a planned work-flow. This "thought dumping" is a well researched (there is a quite famous book about it I believe) way of self-management and I find it very effective.
The most important thing is there is no structure, form or anything other than what I impose on myself - you literally get a blank, empty page and that is it.
That is not to say I think most or any todo list applications are worth while - I think the vast majority of them are really terrible as they are far too complex or constraining, require too much overhead to do the simple things like creating a task or changing a task status, are too opinionated about how you deal with your todo items (like forcing schedules, reminders or due dates), lack hierarchical structure and lack any kind of free-form input.
The best (and only) worthwhile app that I have ever encountered is not even a todo list app - it is simply a Google Docs document that I leave open in my browser on various computers. I use whatever kind of free form structure I want to dump my thoughts and "todo" things that I feel like at the time - and annotate task status with free text tags and tokens that suit me as I go. Various parts of the documents will at times look like todo lists, plans, schedules, itineraries, work-flows, inventories, idea-lists, collections and more - and it is constantly evolving as the state of my work and activities evolve. Important, current stuff goes at the top - for example my first two blocks are titled "Appointments" (dont want to forget those!) and "Today" (what do I absolutely need to do today). Going down the blocks tend to reduce in priority/importance - for example my very last block is called "Learning" which is a list of various things that I would like to learn more of when I have time (not that learning isn't important, but it is a long-term background activity that I don't need to be reviewing every day).
If I have some thoughts or plans that I feel are important, but I dont want to focus on them now, I will just dump them in the document and move on to something else. Later I can come back and review that dump, maybe translate it into actual todo item or evolve it into a planned work-flow. This "thought dumping" is a well researched (there is a quite famous book about it I believe) way of self-management and I find it very effective.
The most important thing is there is no structure, form or anything other than what I impose on myself - you literally get a blank, empty page and that is it.