My to do list was becoming more of an endless scroll. I had some time off coming up so I relished making a dent in the list. Each day I selected tasks that I would complete that day. After the first week I realised I was being overambitious in estimating what I could complete in a day. I refined my selections and after two weeks I reviewed my list. It was the same size. How? As I crossed off each completed task new ones were being added by both members of my family and myself. As I worked on a task I would notice something else that needed doing, so I would add it. In some instances I would remove one only to add two or three more.
Nature abhors a vacuum and it appears that so do task lists. As you try to make them shrink they only grow bigger!
After the realisation that my to do list is never ending, I switched tactics. I arranged the tasks in order of priority targeting the highest first. This meant that the urgent tasks would get done sooner avoiding my usual ploy of procrastination by doing the smaller less important tasks first. I also added demarcation lines with anything under the last one being of little importance but nice to get done if I had the time. A sort of low priority backlog. I can even colour them differently so that the more urgent tasks when cleared gives me some sort of feeling of accomplishment even if the overall to do list never reaches empty.