Tactics for managing to-do lists

I have by no means figured this out completely for myself, but I thought I'd share what my current tactics are and what I'm trying to solve, and if anyone here has a system that works reasonably well for them then please feel free to share it. I'm in my forties and I'm self-employed (my office is at home, I go to visit customers, fixing computer problems). I think the main things that have bugged me about my time management are the following: 1 - With a single to-do list, some to-do items simply get transferred from one exhausted piece of paper to the next while others get done, and I probably have just mostly ignored the oldest items on my single to-do list. 2 - There are items that have never made it on to a to-do list that definitely should have done, but for whatever reason I've kept them off (maybe because I convinced myself that I'll always remember that item and partly because I don't really want to do it in the first place, e.g. sanding down a doorframe and repainting... Read more