Every (long term) successful person I have met used todo lists.
Having a system to do things is like having good form when playing and instrument (or some sport). You can get quite far without getting the basics right, but then you hit a limit you can't get past it without fundamentally changing things. You can even get injured very easily (literally in sports, burnt out on a desk / management job) or you can just slowly become dead wood over time.
Changing how to do the fundamentals is more and more difficult with experience and age. Once you hit a plateau (or you are already overwhelmed and incapable of coping with things) most people will not be able to start re-learning to do things from scratch neither accept the hit on their productivity for a significant amount of time until they manage to do things on top of the new system.
My advice to those of you who are still young: do count on your immense energy and raw (intelectual) brute force if/as needed but please dedicate a conscious amount of time to deliberately develop a system which is sustainable and can grow with you as needed. You will need to rely on the expertise of others who have already gone very far, in the same way you need to trust your tennis trainer in how to use the racquet. You won't find out by yourself whether you are holding it wrong until you have already hurt yourself. So go and find some system like Getting Things Done or similar, learn it, use it and practice, practice and practice. If you look for role models just search for those people who are very productive in an apparently effortless and natural way. Those are the ones to learn from.
Thank you for this wonderful comment. I'm especially struck by that word "fundamentals," as I think their very ordinariness makes them easy to neglect.
I tried working through some of that conceptual space here:
One my sports coaches used to say “you can’t have fun, without da mentals.” It’s a dumb joke but it’s stuck with me and helps me get through the small things sometimes.
>If you look for role models just search for those people who are very productive in an apparently effortless and natural way. Those are the ones to learn from.
When you have reached the intermediate stage, yes. It is a general rule that it takes a lot of effort to make things look effortless.
There is a lot of proof to this. I am diehard hockey fan, and a lot of the best players in the NHL still use many of the drills they learned as kids. It's not that they mastered the fundamentals, it's that they never stopped practicing them, and never will stop practicing them. Of course, they also use more complex practice routines, but they build on the fundamentals not FIFO them.
Having a system to do things is like having good form when playing and instrument (or some sport). You can get quite far without getting the basics right, but then you hit a limit you can't get past it without fundamentally changing things. You can even get injured very easily (literally in sports, burnt out on a desk / management job) or you can just slowly become dead wood over time.
Changing how to do the fundamentals is more and more difficult with experience and age. Once you hit a plateau (or you are already overwhelmed and incapable of coping with things) most people will not be able to start re-learning to do things from scratch neither accept the hit on their productivity for a significant amount of time until they manage to do things on top of the new system.
My advice to those of you who are still young: do count on your immense energy and raw (intelectual) brute force if/as needed but please dedicate a conscious amount of time to deliberately develop a system which is sustainable and can grow with you as needed. You will need to rely on the expertise of others who have already gone very far, in the same way you need to trust your tennis trainer in how to use the racquet. You won't find out by yourself whether you are holding it wrong until you have already hurt yourself. So go and find some system like Getting Things Done or similar, learn it, use it and practice, practice and practice. If you look for role models just search for those people who are very productive in an apparently effortless and natural way. Those are the ones to learn from.