The Paradigm Shift of Daily Planning for Productivity

I have previously written about my obsessions with task management, and various productivity techniques to fight off procrastination. In the past, I expected to holy grail of personal productivity to be found in an organized list with appropriate metadata for each task. Much like MS Project but on a personal level.

This is why I was so pleasantly surprised to find out how much I love Any.do's daily planning feature. In an otherwise bare-bones implementations with hardly any metadata for each task, and other features not completely ironed out - the daily task planning is divine. This is what made me switch from my trusted Toodledo to Any.do.

Any.do's daily planning feature does everything right. It pops up a friendly and appropriately obtrusive reminder each morning to plan your day. With interspersed motivational messages it is a reminder that you should be in control of your to dos and not vice versa. In combination with a super-attractive and to-the-point GUI, the daily chore becomes an interruption with a cadence I look forward to taking on. It's a bit like gaming your to do list, another long-time idea I have been nurturing.

Ultimately, this daily planning feature, has become the heart of my to do list - and rightly so. In the end there are too many unknowns in all of our lives to plan ahead for the far flung future.

One day at a time.

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