Like many busy people, I keep a running to-do list (I’ve been using Evernote). I have one list for my personal task, and one for my work tasks. The lists never really shrink. It seems that for every “buy new pillows”, there is at least one “give $50 to super for fixing toilet”.
However, I can’t seem to live without it. To me, it serves as a part of the brain that us humans (at least me) have been born without. An area in which we can keep lists of things for months without forgetting them. I need some kind of Faceral Lobe (Facere is latin for “to do”). Maybe in the future we’ll have a chip to add this functionality to our brain, but for right now I need my to-do lists.
So you can imagine my disheartened surprise when I learned from the Harvard Business Review that keeping a to-do list is an exercise in futility. Instead, researchers recommend “Living the Calendar”, which essentially means transferring everything from your to-do list into your calendar to give it a specific deadline and time length.
Personally, I refuse. My to-do lists keep me going, and gives me a sense of control over my life. For most every attack on the to-do list, I’ve got a parry:
To-do lists give us too many choices: True, but isn’t choice one of the things that keeps us happy? If I felt like my days were predetermined by my calendar for months out, I’d blow my brains out.
Items languish on the to-do list: So what? I let them. I’m constantly reading through the list to make sure I’m doing the things that need to get done. What’s the point of paying my taxes three months early when I need to get the car fixed today?
We tend to do the easiest things first: OK, we’re all guilty of this. But I have a mantra which goes “Do The Hardest Things First”. It helps me tackle the most unpleasant tasks before the easy ones.
Lack of commitment devices: But is Google Calendar, or whatever you chose, really a better commitment device? You can just move tasks you don’t want to do to a different day.
So go ahead Mr. HBS, “Live the Calendar”. I’m holding on to my to-do list, and to freewill.
