# Systems to Cover Up Symptoms

By [The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman](https://paragraph.com/@nickgrossman) · 2013-09-25

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[Cescalouise](http://cescalouise.com) and I have started using [Wunderlist](http://wunderlist.com) to keep track of shared to-dos (bills to pay, stuff to buy, etc).  I’ve been a user of Wunderlist for a number of years now and have [written about it before](https://ngis.lndo.site/post/37085061071/hacking-todos).

The shared lists in Wunderlist actually seem to be working for us.   Whenever she adds or updates an item, I get a notification, and vice versa.  This is helpful, for me at least, and can hopefully help her get less annoyed at me for forgetting things :)

I mentioned yesterday that I thought it was working pretty well, and her response was: “we’ll see.  systems cover up symptoms.”  Which is a fair point, I think.  It’s easy for me to waste time fiddling around with a perfect system and feel like I’m making a lot of progress, while not actually changing the underlying thing (in this case, not paying attention to things as much as I should).

In this particular case I am hopeful that the system will help solve the root problem, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

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*Originally published on [The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman](https://paragraph.com/@nickgrossman/systems-to-cover-up-symptoms)*