I'm glad if going todo-less works for the author but I wouldn't recommend it. I doubt many people have the capacity to remember that meeting you're supposed to have Friday after next at 3:30 or that little bug someone just mentioned over the phone that you'll have to fix at some point when you're back at the office.
Like all things, you can go to far with todo lists. Todo today lists have never worked for me. But I'd be lost without a list of appointments and minor/forgettable actions (filed according to the context in which they need to be done).
The trouble with to-do-ing the minor/forgettable stuff is that, over time, you end up with a big-ass Katamari ball of minor/forgettable that is kind of oppressive.
Or you become a slave to getting minor/forgettable things done, out of fear that they will inevitably overwhelm you -- which they will, since there are always a zillion minor, forgettable things you could be doing.
Which is worse? I think they're both pretty bad outcomes.
Okay, I'm probably making that mistake because I use Todoist as both calendar and todo list.
There is another option as well as the two you list, which is to remove items off your list as you can't/don't want to do them. Since I never have any more than half a dozen items on any of my three calendar/todo lists I never feel particularly oppressed. But I know that if I didn't have
those lists there I'd be forgetting stuff all the time and letting people down - and I know because I never used to use a todo list.
Like all things, you can go to far with todo lists. Todo today lists have never worked for me. But I'd be lost without a list of appointments and minor/forgettable actions (filed according to the context in which they need to be done).