First I set a priority with the famous priority matrix:
- **A:** Urgent and important
- **B:** Important but not urgent
- **C:** Urgent but not important
- **D:** Not urgent and not important
- **E:** To delete or reprioritize at the next iteration
Then I take at hand only five tasks to actually do, they can be less than five but not more.
The rest of them is to be forgotten until the tasks are done.
if I need to take another extra task I must decide what I take down from the 5 "active" to keep being within the limit.
The backlog should be around 50 tasks at most of context I have "Work" and "Personal" as context with a count of 50-60 in total right now.
I also keep four important management rules:
1. **No due dates:** With this approach everything is handled manually, so you need keep caring about your to-do list over time without it growing indefinitely like a dumpster.
2. **If I'm not doing it get it out of the "Active" list:** The tasks I keep are what I'm doing and care at the time I put them in "Active" on weekends I take down everything still pending from work, that helps my mind a lot
3. **Read everything everytime:** Each time I decide to add a tasks to the active list I read every single task in my backlog, a max limit is needed to keep it contained and have only a meaningful selection of them, if something has lost its meaning off it goes!
4. **Tasks, not events:** If I have it in my calendar then it's not in my backlog, a tasks is something I **DO** while an event is something I **ATTEND TO**
I've been using this for some time after getting inspired from a playthrough of Pokemon Emerald 😉 and noticed the care I put in selecting my moves after they learned them since they are limited to four.
This is also used by one my colleague and he seems to have a positive feedback about it.