Nothing you finish comes back
The fastest way to stop trusting a list is to check something off and see it again tomorrow. My system has one law about that, and it's checked every morning before I wake up.
Tabled for now. Built, not on the homepage, still true.
The job I gave away
Re-doing. Or worse, re-reading. Every list app I ever used had the same leak: I'd finish a thing, and a week later some reminder or repeat would put it back in front of me. So I stopped believing the list, and a list you don't believe is just noise with checkboxes.
What runs now
One law. Nothing I finish may come back. I've signed off 1,423 cards since this started. Every morning, before my list is built, a check asks: is anything I closed in the last three days open again? If the answer is yes, the build fails loudly and I hear about it before I see a single card.
There's a second half. Some things are supposed to come back. A daily habit is meant to show up every day. A monthly close is meant to show up every month. So every repeating thing carries a scope, today, this week, this month, or once ever, and the check knows the difference between a habit that returned on schedule and a finished task that leaked.
And anything I didn't finish rolls forward with a little count on it. On its third day it stops rolling and asks me a different question: do you actually want to do this?
The free version, one rule for your list
Keep two sections in whatever list you use: Open and Done
Done never gets deleted. It's your proof.
When something is going to repeat, write how often on the line itself
Daily. Weekly. Once. If it doesn't say, it doesn't repeat.
Once a week, paste both sections into your chat app with this:
Compare Done against Open. Tell me anything in Open that also appears in Done, and whether its line says it is supposed to repeat. If it does not say it repeats, it leaked. Then tell me anything that has been in Open for more than three weeks and ask me, one at a time, whether I still want to do it.
What it hands back
Here is the comparison.
Leak check — items in Open that also appear in Done:
- take vitamins: marked daily in Open, so it's supposed to repeat. Not a leak.
- return amazon box: Open has no repeat notation. This leaked — it's done but still sitting in Open.
- weekly meal plan: marked weekly in Open, so it's supposed to repeat. Not a leak.
- sign permission slip: Open has no repeat notation. This leaked — it's done but still sitting in Open.
So two items leaked: return amazon box and sign permission slip. You may want to clear those off Open.
Now, for items open more than three weeks (added on or before August 15), let's check in one at a time.
First one: "call pediatrician re form," added August 10 — that's 26 days old. Do you still want to do this?
Where this goes wrong
Asking only about today. A finished thing archives overnight, the check stops seeing it, and it comes back tomorrow as new. Every did I already do this question needs a window, today, this week, this month, or ever, and a habit that returns on schedule isn't a leak.
The rule underneath
The list has to be trustworthy before it can be helpful. A finished thing that reappears is the moment you stop reading.
Numbers on this page come from my own system, computed 2026-09-10: 1423 ticked checkboxes across the live queue and the yearly archive · 43 distinct mornings the 6 AM job ran, 2026-07-28 to 2026-09-10.