Quick Tip: Don't Sweat the Duplicates

Quick tip prompted by Rosemary Orchard in this week's episode of Nested Folders Podcast:

It's ok to capture something more than once.

When I first started using a to-do list I had a bad habit: at the moment of capturing a to-do I wasted time trying to remember whether I had already recorded, usually ending up wandering endlessly through my database to make sure I haven't entered this before.

This friction kept me from focus and from capturing to-dos. I was afraid of "cluttering my system" or reducing the purity of my system. (I'm a data nerd, ok? Consistency is important!)

Now, I capture everything I might want to do, without worrying whether it exists yet. I trust my daily review to place the to-do in the right location, and I trust my weekly review to delete duplicates.

This simple mental shift allows me to capture quickly and effortlessly, returning my precious attention to the task at hand.