Why Another Planning App?
Planning isn’t easy. Like any other skill, some people have a natural talent for it, while others need practice and training. Just like you can’t run a marathon on your first day of training, mastering planning takes time and effort. You might understand the benefits of planning but still struggle to stick with planner apps (like Todoist) or approaches (like GTD). If that sounds familiar, the Super Minimal To-Do app might be just what you need.
Training to Plan
Most planning tools are designed for highly efficient people who are already skilled at organizing. These individuals are either natural organizers or have spent years cultivating the habit of managing their time and priorities. While a list of tasks might seem as simple as a dumbbell, using it effectively can be just as challenging as lifting that weight.
For me, the biggest challenge has always been dealing with tasks that I’ve added to my to-do list but haven’t found the time to complete. I can’t simply remove them from the list, and as time goes on, these unfinished tasks pile up. The frustration of carrying them over or constantly replanning can become overwhelming.
Eventually, I reach a point where I give up and stop using the to-do list altogether, leaving a bunch of unchecked boxes staring back at me with a sense of reproach.
The Most Forgiving To-Do List Ever
Struggling with time management, I developed a system where every morning, I write down a list of tasks in my notebook for that day. Nothing is scheduled automatically, and no task is carried over to the next day or put in a “do it later” bin. At the end of the day, the list is cleared, and the next morning I start fresh.
This approach has been incredibly helpful for me. By tackling only the tasks for the current day, I avoid the burden of unfinished tasks piling up and creating stress. It turned out to be far more effective than continuously carrying over incomplete tasks until they’re eventually done.
To use the dumbbell analogy again, if I had tasks scheduled for yesterday that I didn’t complete, it would feel like skipped repetitions that I now had to add to today’s workout.
I’ve been using this system for several years now, and it’s become a vital part of my daily morning routine.
Not Forgetting Important Things
The undone tasks must not be deleted, and they’re not put into some kind of suggestion box. They remain in the most logical place possible — not marked as done on the day when they were scheduled. If there’s a truly important task that must be done (why hasn’t it been done by the way if it was so important), I manually recreate it for a different day.
Manually recreating the task each time actually creates either a moment of microshaming(that’s a trademark by the way), boosting the motivation to complete it, or gives me extra 3 seconds to re-evaulate if that task is actually worth spending time on.