Brian Doll:
This was incredible to read. The next paragraph suggests that if something is important enough, you’ll be reminded of it often. No need to manage some nasty product backlog. It hit me that if this worked for products, it probably works for your own tasks too.
Not only is Brian's piece spot on, it's also touching and heartfelt.
When pruning my RSS and Twitter feeds, I realized that the most important stories htting the Internet would show up countless times no matter which feed I browsed. In other words, the Internet is immensely redundant.
I never in a million years thought I could apply this same redundancy to my day-to-day tasks. The most important tasks, as Brian correctly points out, will be brought up again and again before they are done. This signifies importance and allows elimination of the tedious crap you don't want to do. If it's not brought up multiple times in a natural manner, it probably isn't of extreme importance.
This is powerful. It may be "procrastinative" in nature, but workloads aren't bulky enough if you have time to complete tasks ahead of time. We are so overscheduled that completing stuff on time or slightly late is not only normal, it's expected.
Oh, and Brian talks about his natural switch to Field Notes as his go-to memo book. I think that's reason enough to head over and check out his awesome article.