At the end of every work day I attempt to add apointments for the next work day to a personal calander for the things I want to work on. I don't figure out individual tasks but will figure out what projects I want to work on and for how long. I dont' view these as hart committments but it definitely makes it easier for me to start the day with focus instead of trying to remember where I left everything yesterday.

I keep a sort of common book in a text file. All my meeting notes and other things go into that file, with dates marked in a standard format. I have one file per year. I use Emacs and a set of TODO DONE IDEA etc tags sort-of inspired by orgmode.

Specific tasks go into GitHub issues, with a pointer in the text file. "WORKING" tags in each repository to mark tasks I'm currently working on.

At the end of the day, if I have a special need to pick up a task I write a note in ALL CAPS.