It said I never listened. It was right. We now have a healthier arrangement: I write three things, do one, feel smug.
The problem was never the list. It was the length. Twenty items is not a plan, it is a reproach you carry around all day and read whenever you feel too comfortable.
Three items is a different object. It fits inside a day with room left over for the things that never make it onto a list: the phone call from your sister, the dog who wants to go out, the hour that disappears because you were talking to someone.
Watch what the long list does to a good day. You finish something real at eleven in the morning and feel nothing, because eleven other things are sitting there looking at you. Call it a design problem, since you designed it.
I still write the long list sometimes. Old habits are persistent and I am not writing a book about being cured. But I no longer believe it. A long list is a wish list, not a debt.
The smugness is real, by the way. Doing one thing and crossing out two inside the first hour is unreasonably satisfying, and I recommend it.
Write three things for today. Do one, cross out two, then stop for the afternoon.