Going back to Todoist + Journaling from todo.txt
This past few months, I had been finding alternatives for Todoist. To add context on my use of the app. I have over 20,000 karma points.
However, there's a catch when using such an app. The Zeigarnik Effect. I encountered the term while reading Tala's blog a week ago. The Zeigarnik Effect tells us that unfinished tasks stay a lot longer in our minds than the finished ones.
On Todoist, I kept on rescheduling plans on the next days. My list just kept growing longer.
Last month, I stumbled across an article from Jeff Huang entitled, My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file. It's such an efficient system. Your todo-list also serves as a what-i-did list. And you can add notes underneath each task for follow up tasks or a short description about an event completing that task.
The todo.txt serves as both a todo list and a digital journal.
While I was using this system, I noticed that I wasn't writing on my digital journal anymore. I found it to be redundant to repeat the words I've written on the .txt file. So I sunsetted that .md file for a while.
A month of not using Todoist and journaling on my .md file, I found that my Zeigarnik Effect grew even more! The things that I hadn't done in the previous days keep on lingering at the back of my head. Even when I do a task that I was supposed yesterday is checked today. That yesterday task should remain unchecked.
While it counts as a historical evidence that I didn't do it, I'm very much tempted to tick that mark and move on.
And since I have an on-going project that requires me to use Obsidian, I'm more obliged to use the system that I had been used to for the past year or so.
The todo.txt is such an effective tool. However, it would seem that this system is not for me.
Until then, I'll be using (again) Todoist for tasks and Obsidian for journaling.