I think the articles you link are mistaken and that OP is correct. This is quote from one of them says it all: "I've tried to maintain to-do lists at various points in my life."
Of course don't do that. Todolists are there to help you remember things, not to be "maintained" or to provide you with a sense of "achievement" or whatnot. They are basically the same thing as a shopping list. Nothing more, nothing less.
The first step to actually use a todolist is not to use fancy Todolist apps. Just use Notepad or whatever simple text editor that can do cut/paste.
Yes, and learn to let the list go sometimes. Re-assess it, toss it away and make another one, etc. It’s much better to consciously ignore/forget about some tasks (because they have become unimportant) than to unwillingly forget something important.
That's why I don't like them having a 'done' column (or bucket, state, whatever) - they should be at most archived, if not just outright deleted, IMO. Just to-do, maybe optionally doing, and gone. Gone for whatever reason. And then you're never tempted to play the silly game of 'add task I already did so that I can tick it off'.
Yes. My Todolist is a textfile with one horizontal bar (=====). Above it are the things to do, below the thing that I did. When something gets urgent I move the item just above the bar. When I do something I just move the line under the bar.
I do that because sometimes I don't remember if I did something or not. Or because I need to add details about how I did it (or why I couldn't do it, sometimes). I have this additional rule that, when a task needs extra info, they are indented right after the item line.
Actually the whole thing is one section of a VimWiki file, but I use none of the features of the plugin for this. It does have single-keystroke checkboxes; I use that for checklists, which are sort of "repeatable todolists".
There is nothing bad about choosing to to do some tasks. You have infinite things you can do and only finite time -> conclusion is that you will only do an infinitesimal amount of what could theoretically be done.
That makes it infinitely more important that you do the right thing, and so you should be ruthless when you make your choices.
I completely agree (I'm the post author). I found a simple text file works well for me. I think what's most important is that I can get in the habit of using it every day. Most else is just window-dressing.
I use them at work, I have the habit of looking at my todolist when I have nothing to do, or to decide what to do next. Actually we use a ticket system that could act as a todolist, but it's a mess for "local" reasons.
This remembers me that tickets systems are just glorified todolists - and maybe they suffer from the same feature bloat as todolist apps. Although I acknowledge ticket systems are team tools, so it is a whole different game.
Of course don't do that. Todolists are there to help you remember things, not to be "maintained" or to provide you with a sense of "achievement" or whatnot. They are basically the same thing as a shopping list. Nothing more, nothing less.
The first step to actually use a todolist is not to use fancy Todolist apps. Just use Notepad or whatever simple text editor that can do cut/paste.