Bastien Guerry, longtime maintainer and advocate for Org-mode, has a few thoughts on using TODO list efficiently. His thoughts are distilled from 15 years of using Org to keep his TODO list and schedule his tasks.
The chief challenge, he says, is using your TODO list as a tool and not letting it become a burden. Doing it correctly takes discipline and without that discipline the TODO list can become formulaic and burdensome. Happily, Guerry has discovered some principles that can help avoid these problems.
The first principle is to distinguish between notes and TODO items. Things you want to remember should not appear as tasks. Notes are not (necessarily) actionable and should not appear in your TODO list until they are.
A second and related principle is to write concise and focused task items. That means basically just listing the task without a lot of context or explanatory material. That content, if needed, should be linked to not included in the TODO item.
Finally, take care of your agenda. That means not adding TODO item until and unless they are needed and have a specific date they need to be done. Nice-to-do or “someday” items should be in your notes, not your TODO list. You can migrate them from your notes to your TODO list when you are ready to schedule them on a specific date.
Take a look at Guerry’s post to get the details. He’s got some useful ideas if you’re serious about using TODO lists to become better organized.