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PTPL 213 · The Day I Realised My Task List Was a Menu, Not a Mandate

Welcome - Ellane W [Unofficial] June 21, 2026

…was the day I finally stopped over-optimising my plain text lists

Moving my tasks away from apps to plain text lists was supposed to simplify everything. To take the pressure off. So why have I spent so many years optimising them?

Because I didn’t understand the job they did best.

Every task manager does these 3 things

Before getting on with the doing, task management requires you to identify three main things —

What needs to be done, broken into discrete steps
When you can realistically do each thing
the Order in which things should be done

I was trying to get those dear little lines of text to do all of that, all at once.

Okay, I admit my plain text files kind of can do all that. And every task manager that ever there was claims to be able to do it brilliantly. But I discovered that the final word on the last two items on the list are best left to a manual step, on the day in question.

Task lists are a menu, not a mandate

What I’m saying is that no matter what past-you instructed your task manager to put in front of you today, only today’s you knows what is going to work for them. This afternoon’s you may have a different approach, because life is life!

I’m talking about giving yourself permission to view your task lists as a menu rather than a mandate.

Mike Schmitz says it like this:

Treat your task manager as a recommendation engine. Use it to surface things that you should consider, not give you a list of things you have to take action on.

Now it’s a carefully curated menu, most certainly. When planning tasks you do want a general idea of when you will get to them, and which might need doing first. And of deadlines, of course.

But you don’t need to smack yourself in the face with a list that the you of last week decided would be good to get done today. That person did their best to serve you up a good plate of tasks, but they didn’t — they couldn’t — know everything the you of today knows. Time to ask for the menu.

My task management workflow

If this idea is obvious to you, that’s wonderful! You are someone who doesn’t need to obsess over task management because your inner compass steers you aright every time. I hope one day to join your ranks.

Now that I can view my task lists as a menu to choose from, a recommendation engine, I’m doing better at writing realistic lists and at completing more of those tasks each day.

My task management workflow looks like this:

Capture tasks to an inbox
Process tasks, assigning them a category and a time window
Review all tasks in the current time window
Choose a list of tasks for today based on the time I have available
Identify the 2 most important of those and work on them first

I like to write the tasks in step 5 on a piece of paper I can prop up on my desk or carry with me. It’s what I use my one-page notebooks for the most.

Another cool idea my ADHD-type brain would like to try: a typewritten list on an index card!

Concluding with a kind of related point

Further to the quote from Mike Schmitz above — connecting all your notes isn’t the goal:

It’s to make enough sense of what you’ve collected that you can do more of what matters.

And that, my friend, is what task management is all about.

Not having a well-oiled workflow that shows you the right stuff at the right time, helpful though that may be.

It’s about making sense of what’s in front of you so that you can do more of what matters.

…was the day I finally stopped over-optimising my plain text lists

Every task manager does these 3 things

Task lists are a menu, not a mandate

My task management workflow

Concluding with a kind of related point

Discussion in the ATmosphere