Quote Originally Posted by Desultory
I'm finding that the things I put onto paper are the ones that get done. As much as possible, I do them FIFO. If I allow myself to pick and choose from a context, then the same items go unchosen forever.
FIFO would be a completely arbitrary order for me. I want to do the most important things first. It doesn't matter to me if less important things go unchosen for awhile.

Maybe I wasn't clear that my lists are prioritized by software. Yes, there are 100 things, but the top 10-20 are the ones I want or need to do today anyway.

Quote Originally Posted by Desultory
I also limit the number of items on my plate. Things I can't possibly get to today are stashed away in the tickler. After all, what's the point of having a hundred NA's on your visible lists? You'll grow numb to them.
The point of having a hundred NAs is so that I don't have to keep moving them from tickler to active, active to tickler, etc. Using a tickler is a means of prioritizing in advance. I don't need to prioritize because the software does that for me, saving me lots of work. The list of 100 items is prioritized. The top 10 items I can see in one eyeful are my most important ones. If I don't want to see the hundred, I simply don't scroll. But I just save myself the trouble of frequent prioritizing via tickler.

Prioritizing via tickler and Someday/Maybe lists also absolutely requires frequent review to keep it working. This is organizational overhead. I have found that using a tool that prioritizes pretty well for me reduces this overhead and greatly reduces the need to review.

I do not go numb to my lists because
1) The most important are at the top anyway, so I know and trust that I don't have to read and re-read the list all day long to keep from missing something important.
2) If there are actions I don't like to see or may be going numb to, I delete them. If I know I "can't" delete them, I reconnect to my purpose for doing them.