Make things easier for me

I have a somewhat demanding job, a lott of things running in the same time. I can manage to do 50 todo's in comfortable way, but with just a little more todo's it becomes a mess. 

What are my main problems? 

• keep track of all my todo's without forgetting the (for me) unimportant stuff 
• getting new todo's in the system
• organizing my todo's
• organizing my notes that belong to the todo's 

Keeping track in of all the todo's is just a simple solution, just do it: 

1. Every morning read your mail, add the todo's to your list 
2. Close your mailbox
3. Review your todo list 
4. Make a short-list for that morning
5. Start to work

After lunch, the same thing. 

How do I deal with this mail every day. 

1. I use Apple's mail.app and I've set-up this system: 

• INBOX - all unread mail
• Answer - These mails need an answer 
• Follow Up - Answered them of just information I need to follow up on.  
• Today - Need answering today
• ToDo - Make a todo from this

Create the following smart mailboxes: 

• INBOX - all unread mail
• Answer - showing all blue marked messages. 
• Follow Up - showing all orange marked messages 
• Today - showing all yellow messages
• ToDo - showing all green messages
• Recently seen - for the mistakes or review 
• Recently send - for review 

Create the following shortcuts: (http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13916)

• alt-cmd-b =  Blue (in dutch b for beantwoorden (answer)
• alt-cmd-o =  Orange (in dutch o for opvolgen (follow up)
• alt-cmd-v =  Yellow (in dutch v for vandaag (today)
• alt-cmd-t =  Green (t for todo) 

When a mail comes in you need to decide right away what to do. If it takes less than 2 minutes to deal with it I will, not I'll make a todo or put it in answer. 

2. Close your mailbox, it will distract you from your work, if they need you they'll call. 

3. Review your todo list. 

I was a long time user of Wunderlist, great app on all platforms. But I discovered that I love text files, you can open it everywhere, small.  And also organizing notes in outliners, but then I had problems with the files, large and I couldn't open them everywhere. Just recently I discoverd Taskpaper and I love it. TaskPaper — Simple to-do list software for Mac & iPhone It brings it all together for me I just love it. 

I sync a file on dropbox wich I can open everywhere with a texteditor. 

You can automate some more stuff with Tasklist: http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/wiki/TaskPaper

I use this option:

Service Menu Items

Service menu items provide similar functionally to the quick entry window. They allow 

you to add new tasks to your list without switching to TaskPaper. To use the service 

menu:

1. Select text in any application that you want to make into a task.

2. Choose Application Name > Services > TaskPaper > New Entry and a new task 

will be created from your selected text and inserted into your lists Inbox project.

4. It helps me to create a list for me what is important for that morning. It gives me more focus and less cherry picking. 

5. Start to work, there are a million things to explore, but it doesn't getting your todo's done, just add them to your list. You will get to it.