Martin Hähnel

The Closed List

Changelog

  • 2025-06-23 - I just noticed that this post has a weird permalink: https://blog.martin-haehnel.de/2025/06/22/The%20Closed%20List/ I won't actually change this as I like my URLs to be stable for the lifetime of the blog, but I wanted to note, that I noticed it. The background here is that I accidentally named the file (which will be part of the permalink) like the title of the blogpost. Which works, but I'd rather it wouldn't have, I think... Although it makes me think if working with filename = title is easier to work with in Obsidian and if I should just slugify that instead of making sure I pick a filename that works nicely as a permalink.
  • 2025-07-08 - This post was briefly not available because I had written the value for the permalink key in the yaml frontmatter with urlencoded spaces %20 when I updated my permalink structure recently. But that doesn't work. The permalink has to be written like this if it should include spaces in the build: /2025/06/22/The Closed List/index.html. TIL.

A closed list approach to your ToDo-List works like this:

It strikes me that most of the task-management systems that actually work – perhaps even all of them – do so because they’re some version of a “closed list”. A closed list is just any list that has a fixed number of entries, as opposed to an endlessly increasing number of entries. If you have a practice of picking three “must dos” for the day, that’s a closed list.

So writes Oliver Burkeman in his most recent Newsletter. I totally agree. It's the reason why the little template we use on didyoudoit.lol (find out more here) is structured around your three most important goals for the week.