I make lists and break tasks in to smaller tasks, however I rarely reference these lists. They basically end up in the void. The act of making the list gets my juices flowing and reminds me of the side effects / bigger picture of my current challenge.
Realizing this also helps me avoid yak shaving over list making tools, since I could care less about even saving the lists! I keep a folder of text files in any project I'm working to hold my lists, but tbh it's unnecessary to even save them.
I see this a lot in this thread (and have heard it a number of times before), and it sounds intuitively right to me, but could you give an example of when and why that is the case?
Even if this is right (and I definitely think there is a lot of truth to it!), planning is not the only kind of "writing down ideas to reinforce and flesh them out" activity. Is it the most valuable one? And is this the only and best way to reinforce and flesh out ideas, or are there other ways that might be even better, like creating prototypes or just actively fiddling around with different approaches and possibilities? In my view, it isn't that there is no value in pondering the detailed sequence of work it will require to accomplish something over the next three months, it's more that I think beyond a horizon of a few weeks, most of the other things I could be doing with that time usually ends up seeming more valuable, to me.
Realizing this also helps me avoid yak shaving over list making tools, since I could care less about even saving the lists! I keep a folder of text files in any project I'm working to hold my lists, but tbh it's unnecessary to even save them.