I'm trying to focus on "what I got done" as opposed to "what just landed in the inbox" or "what's just stewing on the todo list incomplete".
The biggest bonus of this is that the count of things that are done if you count carefully is a number that keeps going up and up, in a good way! ↗ ↗ ↗ Compare that with inbox size (number goes up, in a bad way) or size of todo list (up and down, hard to draw conclusions).
The second biggest bonus of the focus on finishing tasks is a list of things that were accomplished - to brag about,
or to review from the previous day to see to it that everyone who needs to know about what's been done gets the word.
How this works out in practice
I'm currently using gitea as a personal issue tracker. It's a self-hosted software development environment
and "git forge" along the lines of Github or Codeberg. Currently it's running on a private
network with just me as the only user. https://about.gitea.com/products/gitea
My personal todo list is implemented as issues in gitea, so that it's easy to count the number
of open issues as the "size of the todo list". It's similarly easy for me to count the
number of messages in my Gmail inbox as "inbox size". My experience tracking both of those
numbers is unsatisfying - they go up almost solely in response to external inputs like people
sending me mail or work around the house making itself obvious. Reducing the inbox size by
increasing the size of the todo list doesn't feel like anything's getting done (and it's not).
gitea helpfully also counts the number of closed issues, which I'm now also tracking as the
count of "things that are done". Unlike the other two numbers, that tally simply goes up and up.
Tracking numbers that only go up and where all increases are good news is satisfying, in the
way that "inbox zero" measures are never satisfying. Occasionally an issue gets closed because
I'm not going to do it after all - that's a success as well.
gitea also helpfully lets you sort issues by "maximum number of comments". If I look at the
pool of stuff to do, and sort it so that the ones I have the most commentary or notes on are
at the top, perhaps these are the ones closest to being "done", or "done enough" to warrant
closing.
To keep track of successes, I have an "inbox abatement" issue which I post to tallying things
that are complete with one-line descriptions of the completeness. I'm not completely satisfied
with that part of the success-tracking yet -- it might be that better belongs in a markdown file
somewhere - but at least I have it noted somewhere I can then reuse it or bask in the reflected
glory of a job well done.
