I use plain text documents for todos because what actually works for me keep changing over time as I find new and incentive way to avoid what is on them, and so todo apps have never worked well for me because I keep having to change them.

There are some overall approaches that keep working for me. E.g extract a few of the most urgent tasks and move them to the top; if I don't feel like doing any, try to split a few tasks into smaller sub tasks; try to set a schedule with specific times to do specific tasks.

Usually one or more tactics will work to get me going any given day, but it's not a given which ones so I keep cycling between things.