Plain text files are cheap and occupy basically 0 space. Whenever I have an overfull todo list - let's call it todo.txt - I copy it to a file named x.txt, and trim it down. Then when I finish that, I go back to whatever is left in todo.txt.

Now pretend that I cut and cut but can't bring myself to reduce x.txt to less than, say, 50 items, every one essential to complete by today. What do I do then? I copy x.txt to y.txt, and reduce x.txt to just what I plan to do for the next 4 hours. If that's still too long, I copy y.txt to z.txt, x.txt to y.txt, and reduce x.txt again. You could always start lower in the alphabet (a.txt) if you want more "space".

You get the idea. The point is, with text files, if it's got too much in it, create a backup version of that file and cut it down to size. Repeat as necessary until your todo list is manageably long.

As a systemiser using GTD I have an ever growing list of items to get to should I complete items for the day, but I don't understand how you could expect to address 133 items in a day.

If the approach is to let low priority items roll over, that just seems like a recipe for dropping the ball.

Are people getting through 133 items in a day? That's 216 seconds per item.

Indeed. But the action of creating is a list is separate and indeed different from actionioning said list. Creating lists reduces my anxiety significantly...

I don't understand that, at some point don't you just forfeit what you haven't done in a month or two and get back onto a manageable list? I mean keeping track of everything is a philosophy, but to the point where the vast majority of your system is just noise, what's the point?