I ragequit todo lists after the Android / iOS ecosystem failed to produce a worthy successor to Progect (for PalmOS). Not only could it support hierarchical lists but it could also allow you to report % complete and rollup partial progress to upper tiers, which really encouraged me to break things down into manageable steps. And yet it still allowed the free rearrangement of tasks anywhere, in addition to assigning priorities. This makes it easy to sequence tasks in the order that I'll probably get to them to get the easy wins you describe.
Since then, would often fallback to the written disposable checklists you describe. The main benefit there is that tasks I've been putting off would often have to be transferred and rewritten on my new todo list... so I could only put off things for so long until I get tired of rewriting them and either find it easier to do the task or give up migrating them to the current todo list.
The last thing I found useful about todo lists was finally learning to leave off things that will never be marked "done"... such as "walk the dog" or "clean the house". Those are certainly things that take up lots of time and belong on the schedule, but they're pretty demotivating to have included on a todo list where you can never satisfyingly mark them complete. Functions like this always tend to sneak in to annual performance reviews and scrum boards, but they fail to meet the "S & A" in "SMART" goals. If you can't visualize the conditions where you ever get to mark it done, it shouldn't belong on a todo list. Some form of habit tracker would be more effective... which might be a good topic for a future SL since I'm not aware of too many good ones beyond the step/sleep trackers.
I ragequit todo lists after the Android / iOS ecosystem failed to produce a worthy successor to Progect (for PalmOS). Not only could it support hierarchical lists but it could also allow you to report % complete and rollup partial progress to upper tiers, which really encouraged me to break things down into manageable steps. And yet it still allowed the free rearrangement of tasks anywhere, in addition to assigning priorities. This makes it easy to sequence tasks in the order that I'll probably get to them to get the easy wins you describe.
Since then, would often fallback to the written disposable checklists you describe. The main benefit there is that tasks I've been putting off would often have to be transferred and rewritten on my new todo list... so I could only put off things for so long until I get tired of rewriting them and either find it easier to do the task or give up migrating them to the current todo list.
The last thing I found useful about todo lists was finally learning to leave off things that will never be marked "done"... such as "walk the dog" or "clean the house". Those are certainly things that take up lots of time and belong on the schedule, but they're pretty demotivating to have included on a todo list where you can never satisfyingly mark them complete. Functions like this always tend to sneak in to annual performance reviews and scrum boards, but they fail to meet the "S & A" in "SMART" goals. If you can't visualize the conditions where you ever get to mark it done, it shouldn't belong on a todo list. Some form of habit tracker would be more effective... which might be a good topic for a future SL since I'm not aware of too many good ones beyond the step/sleep trackers.