I have no idea what I have to do

I need a better to-do list for work.  I’ve tried a rolling spreadsheet (I had a macro that would create a new tab with the current date and include all of the items from the previous tab – then I could just delete completed items), I’ve tried random text documents (I lose them or forget about them), and then I moved on to using my Outlook calendar.  That worked for a while. I either add an appointment early in the day with a reminder, or I mark something as an all day task, with or without a reminder.  Every time I look at my calendar (which is a lot – I have a lot of meetings), I’m reminded of the things I have to do.  If I don’t finish a task, I can move those from day to day, or if they have reminders, leave them (as long as I don’t dismiss the reminders) and they’ll continue to appear in front of my face when the reminder thing pops up.

Problems:

  1. I start ignoring the popups.  I get so used to seeing the same tasks (because I have to keep putting off the low priority ones in favor of the crisis of the hour), and the list keeps growing, and it keeps growing with low priority issues…so I just ignore the popup reminder.
  2. If I ignore the popup because I don’t want to look at the long list of tasks I’m being reminded to do (because I don’t have time to do them because crisis of the hour has my attention), I miss ACTUAL reminders of ACTUAL meetings.  Today, for instance, I was 20 minutes late to a meeting because I paid no attention to the Outlook reminder thingy.

So this isn’t working anymore.  Maybe I’ll try the Excel thing again.  I’ve never actually tried Outlook’s task list – maybe I’ll try that first.  I just know that what I have is failing me.  Or I’m failing it.