The quest for the ultimate to-do list

From the moment I started doing anything, the quest for the ultimate to-do list also began. Basically because it is hard to remember everything you need to do; and also because it gives you a feeling of control - once you have a neat list of things to do, you feel almost done.

As simple as it may seem, a to-do list is actually a very complex thing. There's so many things you can say about the things that you need to do:

• when you need to do them
• what is the priority
• what is the category
• what are the dependencies, on other tasks or other people's tasks
• what progress did you make so far
• what are the sub-tasks

And then, where do you put such a list? In a special to-do notepad, in a file on your laptop, in your PDA, on a website, in your phone or on just a piece of paper.

There are some nice attempts available online, like GooToDo: http://www.gootodo.com/ and the free ta-da list from 37signals: http://www.tadalist.com/.

I think I really tried all of those possibilities. They all work for registering the to-do's and they all work for small lists of tasks. But the problem with any solution on a computer or PDA is that it isn't accessible always - it takes a little effort every time you want to see it or change it. I think the best online to-do list is gootodo, but that is more like a method than just a list - at least I would need to change the way I work for it te become usefull.

For me, the only thing that works for a longer time is the paper version. During meetings or thinking sessions, I take notes and add little A's for Actions. I then basically make a to-do list every two days or so; taking the not-done actions from previous days and distilling all the A-marked actions from my notes. I then prioritize by adding some dashes and arrows, and add sub-tasks to the right.