Today I realized something. I haven’t used a todo list for several months now. Well, at least not in the way I was using them before. I don’t make a list of the things that I want to do during the day anymore, and I think I’m more productive now.

Of course I have other productivity systems in place now, which I’m going to discuss next.

At home – Personal projects

I used to have a todo list for things that I wanted to do in my free time, often with specific time frames for the day ahead. Now I’m using an alternative productivity system stolen from Jerry Seinfeld which I wrote about before. I basically have a yearly calendar for things that I want to work on, and every day no matter what I have to make progress on each of them.

I started with three habits:

  • Writing Publishing a post every day.
  • Working on an open source project
  • Working on one of my products (mostly iphone apps now)

All three of those habits have already made an incredible difference in my productivity in just less than one month. Every day I know that I’m going to accomplish something that in the long term will pay big dividends.

Just two days ago I added a fourth habit: improve my interface design skills. This is an experiment that I’m trying. I’m not skilled at interface design but I know that if I become good at it it’ll make all the differences in my work of software developer, so I set a goal to create something simple every day.

I highly recommend that you try this system if you haven’t already, feel free to read my original post for more details. I recommend that you start small, one or two items is more than enough if you have a full time job already.

At work

At work I prefer to use issue tracking systems. They’re an advanced form of todo lists, but they allow you to collaborate with other members of your company, set milestones, etc. It’s always good to have a stack of tickets that you can work on to avoid procrastination. I personally use lighthouseapp.com, which is excellent for software developers.

Writing ideas, everything else

I’ve created an iPhone app, Green Board Pro, for writing down occasional ideas, the grocery list, and other things that I want to remember. It works great for me, I can write down lists (you see, I still need them) very easily and eventually send them to my email account. Perhaps depending on your needs a simple notes application would work as well, I’ve mentioned my app because that’s what I personally use.

Conclusion

Classic todo lists have worked great for me in the past, but this system is better for me. Do you still make a list of things to do during the day/week/month? What’s your productivity system, if any?