Comment by jodrellblank

> "The biggest killer for any task tracker I find is an accumulating backlog of items that seem too important to quit but too intractable to make progress on."

I worked in this space for some time. Solving the backlog problem is the holy grail of To-Do systems. I am convinced it is a solvable problem.

The reason there are a bajillion To-Do apps and strategies right now is because a working UX for a digital task-keeping system is still not figured out. To simply put it, no To-Do app 'works' right now. Many of them work well enough for some people to depend on them to some extent.

One of the major reasons for failure is the backlog problem. It's surprisingly difficult, it's at the crossroads of human psychology and the varying real life tasks and responsibilities of real people. Real world is messy.

You'll see To-Do apps "work" out-of-the-box for most people and be hugely beneficial when:

- You see research papers comparing different strategies for To-Do task scheduling, cognitive load of different UI views, etc.

- Popular To-Do apps converge. They'll likely look nothing like the scheduled-checklist style apps of today.

- People start depending on them in managing most areas of their life.

Right now the To-Do app industry is competing on who has the shiniest UI. Very few players are even acknowledging the backlog problem.

Personally, I tried everything under the sun from using a single .txt file to custom-designed software. I have ADHD. Right now the thing that works best is a physical Bullet Journal. It works because of the friction of paper and pen. It mostly solves the accumulating backlog problem.