Philosopher and novelist “Umberto Eco” is a big fan of
lists and has some fascinating ideas about why they’re so important to humans:
Umberto explained that lists are often seen as relics
of primitive cultures – simplistic devices that don’t belong in our modern day
and age. However, the simple form of the list prevails again and again over
time, because, as Umberto says, it has “an irresistible magic”.
When we struggle to express ourselves, we use lists. Like
Umberto says, lists help us to make sense of the world around us. We create
lists of the sights we see on vacations, the places we want to visit, the food
we want to eat and the groceries we need to buy from the store; and the other
tasks we need to get done. It is a simple habit of increasing our day to day
productivity.
We pack all the madness and ambiguity of life into a structured
form of writing. In short, making lists is a great way to increase our overall happiness
and feel less overwhelmed.
The
Funny reality
To-do list in particular is one that we spend a lot of
time and energy on perfecting. Somehow, we don’t seem to struggle when it comes
to making a shopping list and buying everything on it, but getting the tasks on
our to-do list done is a whole other ball game.
LIST
FOR PRODUCTIVITY: 4 top tips for a to-do list that gets things done
1. Break projects into tasks, don’t succumb to the ZEIGARNIK
EFFECT
We kind of have a reminder system built-in to our minds that
nags us about unfinished tasks, that is called the ZEIGARNIK EFFECT. It
sounds pretty cool that we already have this, but it’s actually not that
reliable or healthy for us.
What really happens is that there’s a disconnect between our
conscious and unconscious minds—the unconscious mind can’t plan how to finish
the task, but it gets annoyed with the feeling of it being unfinished. To shake
off that feeling, it nags the conscious mind with reminders about the task—not
to finish it, but simply to encourage us to make a plan.
The best way is to get familiarize with the method called “next
steps”. It’s the process of breaking down a project or task into smaller tasks,
and planning which one will be the next step towards completing the whole
thing.
This abates the nagging of the unconscious brain, as it
satisfies that at some point we’ll get onto that task, and we know exactly how
we’ll do it. And the essentials of creating these do-able next steps are to
make “a few very specific, actionable, non-conflicting items.”
2. Prioritize ruthlessly
There is a story of a psychologist who gave a talk about
managing time and resources. Before the talk began, the psychologist asked
everyone in the group to write a summary of their strategic approach in 25
words.
Apparently, 25 words were too little for the men to express
their strategies, and the only response came from the single woman in the
group, whose summary read as follows:
First I make a list of priorities: one, two, three, and so on.
Then I cross out everything from three down.
I’ve heard this approach suggested before in various places, and
I would suggest you to post it on your desks that should read, “Prioritize until it hurts” in
other words, learning the powerful skill of saying NO.
To-do lists invariably crop up when we have so many things to do
that we can’t keep track of them all in our heads (Aha! We’re back to Umberto’s
thoughts on how lists help us to create order from the chaos of our lives!); which
means that we end up with lists far too long for us to complete.
Prioritizing ruthlessly seems to be the only way to actually get
done what’s most important in the little time that we have.
3. “Plan ahead” – advice Charles Schwab paid $25,000 for
Here’s another cool story of how to-do lists evolved in the
workplace:
Almost 100 years ago, the President of the Bethlehem Steel
company in the USA was Charles M Schwab. His company was struggling with
inefficiency and Schwab didn’t know how to improve it, so he called in Ivy Lee,
a well-known efficiency expert at the time.
Lee agreed to help the company, with his fee being whatever
Schwab felt the results were worth after three months.
Lee’s advice to each member of the company’s management team was
to write a to-do list at the end of each day, which consisted of the six most
important tasks to be done the following day. Then they were told to organize
the list based on the highest priority tasks.
The next day, the employees worked through the list from top to
bottom, focusing on a single task at a time. At the end of the day, anything
left on the list would get added to the top of tomorrow’s list when the
employees once again planned for the following day.
As the story goes, the company was so much more efficient after
three months that Schwab sent a check to Lee for $25,000.
In your own planning, you can take Lee’s advice for free and use
the night before to plan your workday. Setting out the most important tasks you
want to complete the following day will help you to avoid time-wasters and
distractions by knowing what to work on immediately.
4. Be realistic in your planning
Sometimes it’s nice to know that even our great heroes are
fallible. This story about Benjamin Franklin’s struggles to keep up with his
daily to-do list shows how important it is to be realistic about how much time
we have and what our priorities are.
Franklin was known to be a meticulous tracker of his daily
routine and his work towards the virtues he prioritized. Unfortunately,
the demands of his business meant that he didn’t always keep up with his ideal
daily routine. He often got interrupted by clients and had to ignore his
schedule to meet with them.
He also noticed that some of the virtues he aspired to practice,
such as frugality—not wasting anything—took up too much time for him to live
life as he wanted to. Preparing his own meals and mending his own clothes all
the time, for instance, meant that he didn’t have enough time for business or his
side projects.
The result of these conflicting priorities was unhappiness over
not completing the tasks he set for himself. As a result, he had to
re-prioritize, which is something we should keep in mind.
If we’re struggling to complete our to-do lists on a regular
basis (we’ve all been there at some point!), we need to make a change to the
list—make it more realistic.
Although a to-do list can be infinite, our time is not. We need
to match the tasks we require of ourselves to how much time and energy we can
afford to spend on them. This is where prioritizing can really come in handy,
as well.
Starting to develop your own, personal daily routine is one of
the most powerful ways to become a great list maker.
Bonus: Johnny Cash’s perfect, semi-efficient to do list
As a last example, I found a to-do list from Johnny Cash. This
wouldn’t necessarily be one we’d advocate to help you become more efficient.
But then again, we can’t argue with Johnny Cash’s success, can we?
And I promise, if nothing
else, at-least you will feel that you have some control over things and time.
