On a tangent... I'm a heavy Org-mode (Emacs) user, and while many org-masters use a sophisticated setup to keep track of and analyze their tasks, I use a really stupid two-level approach:
- Every project has its own orgfile, full of important things to do. Nothing fancy, just a bunch of TODOs, sometimes with priority markers on them.
- I also keep an "umbrella" org file that is just a list of the project names, and a short bullet-list of the next one or two things needing doing in that project. There's no automation here, I just review the project files from time to time, and figure out what next-step summary to write in the "umbrella".
- If a project is more important than another project, I just put it closer to the top of the umbrella. No clever algorithm needed to calculate absolute priority levels from relative (project-specific) ones -- just move the pointer up the list.
- If a project needs to be put on the backburner, I keep the project file, but remove it from the umbrella. I might add it back again in a month or two if necessary.
- When something urgent comes up, or I don't have time to file it, I just stick it at the top of "umbrella" and deal with it later. Some weeks I'm just living "in the umbrella" with no time to be organized... but that's okay, when things settle down, I file everything and try to be more organized again.
So my "umbrella" file is my "bucket of pointers to buckets", plus a scratch-space for hasty notes. It's been working well for me for a few years now.
This really was a big tangent. :) Back to the real subject: I feel exactly the same way that others here do. I knock items off my list like mad -- I feel very efficient -- but some days I couldn't tell you what I did the same morning without consulting my Org files first. It's a creepy, vacuous feeling, but I guess I've accepted it as the price of efficiency.
