Would you mind explaining that effort, just a little more? I know you may feel that you already told us, but maybe if you described a day or a week's worth of your maintenance effort for your system, we could suggest ways to make it easier, or at least ask questions that would help you see ways to make it easier.
Nope. You can't have perfection. You had a specific date for an event, but the date moved. Maybe in an ideal world you would have looked up one day and said, "Wait. Graduation moved. Let's do a really fast skim of my ticklers to see if they're relevant to graduation." But...no. It's not like you failed to show up for gradutation, right? Nothing huge went wrong. One nice thought went astray. So be it.
So there IS a reason to have a trusted system. It felt like maybe you were trying to persuade yourself that there isn't.
Is it possible that you're making too big a task of writing down your ideas? For example, if your taxes are due tomorrow and you have a brilliant idea for a song, how much time do you spend recording that idea before you go back to the taxes?
Speaking of taxes being due: If you want to have a life where you can, as often as humanly possible, have the freedom to chase an idea when it comes, then it's worthwhile to get your non-negotiable commitments done early so that there are fewer things that can stop you from chasing those ideas. You might want to actually make a project of that--taxes done early, car maintenance done early, frozen meals in the fridge.
Maybe there are elements of your life that you'll just eliminate, because they produce too many non-negotiable commitments. For example, I don't expect to grow annual flowers in the vegetable garden again for...possibly ever, because they demand too much attention. To fulfill my craving for flowers, I'm putting in perennials that need very little attention, and won't fall over dead if they have to wait a month or more for the little attention they do need.
We've discussed splitting lists off of Someday/Maybe. You can also combine lists. My "books" lists has evolved to actually being a list of books, movies, television, podcasts, websites--it's basically a "media" list. Maybe that would help?
Is it worthwhile to check it ten times? Maybe you could have a phone alarm to remind you to check it twice a week?
I think that Oogiem's life involves more projects, and more tasks that will have serious consequences if they're delayed, than average--or at lease more than you or me. I don't think that she's saying that because she does that, you have to do it.
If you're in the midst of a task, I see zero reason to scan your lists for another task just because you're taking a personal-needs pause. Things that have time-related consequences--"pick up prescription before 5", "pick up Jane at airport", "put turkey in oven" could be set to interrupt you with an alarm. For things that don't, you could trust that you'll scan your current lists sometime in the next 24 hours.
If interrupt-and-check is the thing that trips you up, maybe design the rest of the system to minimize that--make that a high priority for your system, even if it's not a high priority for other people.
You could, for example, decide that half an hour every morning is the only time that you will sit down with your lists. In that half hour, maybe you choose your planned tasks for the day, check your calendar for ticklers, and set alarms so that you don't have to remember to check for time-sensitive events.
Yeah, I don't have the brain you describe.
I think you do have to choose a compromise. Also, you don't have to schedule a meeting--you could pick up the phone. If you can persuade yourself to maintain the agenda list--and you could have ONE Agenda list where all your agenda items for everybody are--then you might find a way to use it.
Have you considered blocking off time to focus on the prosaic, non-creative-flow things? When you're in creative flow and have thoughts for those more prosaic tasks, put them in a single Inbox list.
When you're in a prosaic-task block and have a creative idea, you scribble that down. Yes, sometimes you will lose the mood and context. That's an unavoidable imperfection.
(I'm reminded of a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert. On this link, search for the phrase "Excuse me, can you not see that I'm driving?")
And one of your prosaic tasks is to organize those Inbox items into the right lists. I'm not sure if you're assuming that when you think, "Ask Jane to return that book" you have to take the trouble to find the "Jane" agenda list. I don't do that. I put all thoughts in a single Inbox and organize it later.
Hope everyone is staying safe and practicing social distancing!
