What do you use to keep track of a backlog on solo projects?

I use gitlab's issue.

yes, helpful. I need to prioritize the issues.

Sometimes I get unmotivated on my project. I found setting a concrete and small goal and focus on the goal can help me make progress. I force myself to check off 3 bugs on the bug board everyday.

I don't think it's generally helpful to keep a backlog of something one is building by oneself. The reason is that a solo developer is able to hold in their short term memory what they are working on now and what needs to be done after.

Backlog is good when multiple developers are working on a project because it can make tasks assignable and prevent overlap of work. But in a solo endeavor, keeping a backlog tend to become a mere formality that slows one down.

I guess my claim depends on the complexity of the project, but I think complexity of project that one developer can handle might be limited such that keeping a backlog is not really worth the effort.

For short-term items, I use pen and paper.

For long-term ones, I use TODO notes scattered around my Rails codebase. I have segmented those items into 3 categories: high, medium, and low. Whenever I create a new TODO note, I append one of those categories to it (e.g. TODO[low]).

Rails has a built-in command that displays all those items (`rails notes`). To filter items by the category, I pipe the output from that command to ripgrep:

    rails  notes | rg -S low

Trello. I find it quite useful, as I manage everything I need to do outside of my job there. Home repairs, coding projects, art and photography projects, and I keep a backlog of ideas I've had in case I even get time and energy to build out more things.

I use Trello.

I have a public board that's a hybrid between kanban and idea board. You can see it here:

https://trello.com/b/J7mG9H3X/world-generator-kanban

Currently I'm using a combination of Google Docs for notes and todos, Google Notes for bookmarks/research and Google Sheets for keeping track of financing and marketing. Easy to use and really powerful.

GitHub issues.

Pen and paper.