For now, I'm writing them down in notebook and review it daily. Is there a better way to tackle this?
Now, I am a simple text guy.
todo.txt - both cli and gui synced across computers and phone. Can be viewed anywhere and has a simple grammar. I use it as a personal kanban (i.e. priority of A means doing/do today; B means 'next on deck'; C means 'look at all the stuff you still need to do eventually')
markdown files with a .TODO extension for projects (although you could just have multiple todo.txt files for each project, I dont). And the projects I manage are not complex enough for more complicated solutions (although I do use Pagico for a few larger projects- but have been phasing that out).
I also keep a physical notebook for meetings and for projects. When an actionable item assigned to me comes up, I circle it in the notebook and then transfer it to the one of the files above.
(Not to assume that something similar will work for you, but basically accessibility and making sure I see my TODOs every day is pretty helpful for me to remember to do them)
Never feel guilty about marking things of your todolist you didn't do. You don't put things on your todolist because you want to do them, you put them on your todolist because you don't want to have to remember them. If at a later point you decide you don't want to do them, you don't have to.
I can see what I need to do, what I need to follow up on, etc. Using checkboxes also helps.
Not sure a digital alternative would ever be as satisfying. When ideas bother me at night, I just jot them down and go back to sleep immediately.
It’s very satisfying to run a line through completed tasks.
I have the red one, it works well.
I set aside 30 mins/day for cleaning up my schedule. You need to set aside time to buy food and take out the trash. And you need to set aside time to clean your email.
First 15 minutes: I go through all my emails, flag everything to take action on, archive/delete the ones I don't need to. Then I move it all to the Big List. Go through wallet, any loose papers, Slack, WhatsApp, whatever you're communicating on. Dump it all into Big List. If I have extra time, do the browser bookmarks too.
Prerequisite: I have 10 goals I want to achieve this year, each of them their own list. Workflowy is good for tracking these. These are large goals. Something like "get promoted" might be a subgoal of "buy a house". Picking goals is worth whole books in itself, so I won't cover that. But things like "be healthy" and "spend time with family" are goals too.
Now I take everything out of Big List and assign it to those 10 goals. If it's not on the goal list, I consider just ditching it. Do you really need to get your car tinted this year? Do you need that book? Do you need a blog?
Next 5 minutes: I plan my schedule for the following day. You should commit hard to it. Plan as best you can, then remove one thing. I have an excel sheet with four colors: meetings, focused time, break time, and processing time. Processing time is often first, and frequent. Times to check messages, distribute tasks to other people, do stuff like this, and all blockers.
Last 10 minutes: Pick out stuff from that list of goals and fill in the slots as needed. You often want to sort it so that things from different goals that can be batched together (e.g. calls) are done together. Sort out the goal list so that the thing that needs to come first comes first.
The schedule is purposely tight, so I stay focused. If you run out of time, just do it the next day or assign some time to do it if it's important enough.
Boss: So what all did you do this year, including things that I wasn't directly involved with (like I've done in the past, working as support or internal "consulting" for other projects)
You: Well, I don't know, I didn't track it.
That's not the answer you want to give. Similarly, unless it's a solo project you'll want to be able to answer questions from colleagues. Since not every piece of data shows up in a git repo or JIRA tasks, your own log can be very helpful. Or just for yourself, "Wait, did I actually finish that thing or did I just scratch it off the 'todo' list?"