In this post, I explain why DayTickler allows to focus on “Today”. Why should you separate your “Today” list from the master “To-do” list of everything that need to be done?
“The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 2,063, at least according to Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. We also have completely practical lists — the shopping list, the will, the menu — that are also cultural achievements in their own right.”
Umberto Eco
“The list is the origin of culture,” said Umberto Eco in a fascinating interview with the magazine Der Spiegel about his book The Infinity of Lists: An Illustrated Essay. It seems to be in the genes of human nature to make lists. Unfortunately, lists always end up being too lengthy and in which the significant items are too often hidden. Exhaustive lists are useful to document and catalog the culture of a society but are little use to list things to do.To-do lists invariably crop up when we have so much to do that we can’t memorize all in our heads. Which means that we end up with lists far too long for us to complete. A to-do list with 20 or 30 items is not only daunting, it’s depressing: why even start when there’s no way you will ever finish.
DayTickler solves this problem by allowing you to create a list for things to do today, right now. Pick three or four items off your to-do list that will make the most difference and schedule them in your “Today” list. The action to schedule does not necessarily implies a temporal dimension, you can plan to do something in terms of a place, for example, when you are in your car or at your computer.
Separating your “Today” list from the master “To-do” list of everything that need to be done is a clear incentive for action. The “Today” list lets you focus on what you must do today, while the “To-Do” list gives you a place to dump every little task you think that someday must get done.
Mario Cardinal 