To-do means today

Enjoy a sense of progress by making your to-do list a contract with yourself

If you aim to get things done, most likely you’ve got a to-do list. This list helps you keep track of all the things you intend to do — or at least all the things you theoretically intend to do.

Unfortunately, for many people to-do lists dwell more in the realm of theoretical intentions than reality. They contain everything that people have committed to at any point in the near future, or that they might want to do in their lives. “Call Joe about next week’s sales meeting” winds up right next to “buy tickets for August trip to Chicago” and “clean out the garage.” A list might go on for pages, since some folks take a perverse pride in stretching out the length.

Unfortunately, writing lots of tasks on a to-do list doesn’t get anything done. Indeed, the more tasks on a list, the more likely the list will lead to guilt and disappointment, because it means the things you could do someday, and the things you once thought you should do, and all the things you actually have to do are intermingled. Since you can’t possibly get through everything on a long list in any given day, you keep bumping things forward, and never feel a sense of completion. Writing something on a to-do list is no longer an act of choice about priorities. It’s a meaningless gesture.

So here’s the secret of better to-do list making. “To-do” should mean “today.” When you write something on today’s to-do list, you should truly intend to do it today. The act of putting it on the list should feel like you’ve created a contract with yourself. You should feel confident that you can do it, even with all life’s vicissitudes and uncertainties. Being disciplined about this rule is one of the best ways to get big things done.

Making lists in an uncertain world

I suggest this rule all the time when I remake people’s to-do lists, and inevitably, the first objection I hear is that life is unknowable. How can I possibly mean that someone should make it through everything on a daily to-do list every day? What if my biggest client calls with a huge emergency? What if the school nurse calls at 11 a.m. to tell me to come pick up a vomiting child?

I respond that it is not a surprise that stuff comes up. Stuff always comes up. A smart to-do list can be completed even when life produces its inevitable surprises. (OK, let’s say those within the 99 percent confidence interval of what might happen. If you get hit by a bus at 6:30 a.m. on the way to work and spend the day in a coma, this is obviously a different matter, but most normal woes are foreseeable).

For this confidence level to hold, a to-do list needs to be short. It should contain only those items that absolutely need to happen today, and any steps toward larger goals that you are close to certain will fit, given your energy and available time. Indeed a little pessimism might be helpful here as you are constructing the list. If the school nurse were to call at 11 a.m., what would you still plan to do? You might come up with the agenda for tomorrow’s big meeting in between fetching ginger ale for your kid. But you wouldn’t clean out the garage or buy tickets for a trip that’s 6 months away. So why even list those as options?

Now of course the day’s schedule doesn’t always go awry. If it’s 10 a.m. and you’ve blasted through everything and the sun is shining and no one is sick and the roof hasn’t sprung a leak, by all means, go find some more stuff to do! I make weekly priority lists, and will pull something forward from another day if I’m feeling good. Devotees of productivity guru David Allen create what they call “Someday/Maybe” lists with various tasks that would be nice to do at some point. That’s where you can stash ideas like cleaning out the garage or training for a marathon or remodeling your kitchen. Some people make annual goal lists, or seasonal goal lists, and you should feel free to pull from there if time permits.

A magical sense of progress

But something magical starts to happen when a daily to-do list ceases to be a catch-all and becomes a contract of things you almost certainly will do within the day. You start to be able to trust that when something is on the list it will happen. You start to feel empowered to put tasks on future days. That’s no longer procrastinating or punting something forward. It’s simply scheduling priorities for the time they are best suited for. If I put “edit chapter 28 in my novel” on my to-do list for Wednesday, that’s not a vague hope that will probably get swept aside in the day’s emergencies. That means that I know that everything that absolutely has to happen Wednesday or thereabouts also has a spot, and thus I have space for chapter 28. Since I know it will happen, I can also assign other chapters to other weeks and be confident that I will finish that book.

It’s quite satisfying to end the day with everything crossed off a to-do list. You march your miles and you make progress. A well-constructed to-do list also allows you to end your day guilt-free. You’ve done what you set out to do, and those things you set out to do were wisely chosen to reflect what you needed to do and most wanted to do. When they are done, they are done, and you can be too.

That’s a different feeling than the strange pride some people feel in a multi-page to-do list, but I think it’s more sustainable. Plus, it’s more effective. There’s nothing gained by putting something on a to-do list and not doing it. It’s just as not-done as if it had never been on the to-do list in the first place! Better to have to-do mean today and get stuff done and feel good about it.