Why I don't do to-do lists

23.05.2016 4 min read

I used to think making to-do lists is the way to live, learn and work. It seemed like anyone who was someone was making to-do lists, thus should I too. After years of struggle, lots of undone lists and feeling like a failure, I stopped.

Make a search for subjects related to productivity, success and organisation, and you will eventually find an enthusiastic case for to-do lists. To-do lists are everywhere. Bloggers offer printable to-do lists as gifts for subscribing to their emails. There are courses and coaching of using to-do lists better. Your smartphone is filled with apps for making your various to-do lists. You've got a dedicated notebook for it, filled with lists you never get done. To-do or not to-do... There's no question.

The thing about to-do lists is that they get filled with stuff. Any stuff. Stuff that happened to be relevant at the time, but isn't relevant any longer. Stuff set to be done sometime in the unknown future. Stuff that has no beginning nor ending. To-do lists force you to do things just because they were added to the list. Or at least to think you must do them, since they are on your list. That's what happened for me. I created to-do lists of things and after a while those things, for reason or another, stopped being relevant. Sometimes I would forget to mark them done, because I had better things to do than go over the endless list of things I had at some point thought to be important. I learned, after a while, that if I didn't remember doing something without a to-do list, that something wasn't relevant to anyone. The least for myself.

The other thing about to-do lists is that they lure you to create wide tasks. So you will write down "make the website for this client" rather than mark down things you must do in order to make the website. Like installing the CMS or blogging platform. Or importing/inserting content. Or creating the overall layout and the layouts of different pages and subsections. I could go on and on. If you would write all these things down to your to-do lists, your list would be even crazier than it already is. So you rather mark things down as generally as possible. That's what, anyway, I would end up doing.

Then there's the whole problem with timing. To-do lists are most often set to do sometimes. You know, in the future. For me that meant adding things to the list and never doing them. Often a thing on my list would stop being relevant after a while. Perhaps I did something else instead or the circumstances changed so drastically there was no point to do whatever it was I wrote to my to-do list. Firstly there's no point in making lists of things to do in the distant, unknown future. You don't know what has changed by then. One suggestion of keeping to-do's in a tight leash is to go with scheduling. The idea is to come up with a realistic time frame for each task and remember to schedule also the downtime, dinners and even sleeping. You'll notice you have only a limited time of hours in a day, which will make you more economical about the tasks you set to yourself.

One of the main reasons why I don't do to-do lists, the reason that comes from all the reasons I mentioned before, is the fact that I'm prone to anxiety. For a person prone to anxiety, to-do lists are poison. The weight of all the listed things undone. The expectance of marking stuff to the list, when you don't always even need to do that in order to remember the stuff. The feeling that I should mark things done in the list. Maintaining the to-do lists became a task itself. To-do: Keep a to-do list.

There are situations when I mark things down for doing later. Such situations as meeting with a client and marking down some changes they request or things they (or us together) have noticed need to be fixed. Or other stuff like that. They do look horribly like to-do lists. Except that 1) I don't usually mark things done and 2) I keep the list short. The part one, where I don't mark things done is just my own thing. Marking things done takes time and effort, either which I don't want to waste in such boring and mundane thing to do. If you love marking things done, I don't judge. It's not for me. The second part, keeping the list short, means that for one I don't keep a running to-do list, to which I add everything. I keep the tasks relative to different clients and their needs separate. I also try to concentrate on one chunk of tasks (one client's tasks/one bigger thing I need to do for a client and the tasks related to that) at the time, getting different tasks done sooner rather than later.

Instead of keeping to-do lists I make a note of things that need my attention at the time and set myself to a limited amount of daily tasks. Very limited. Sometimes I don't get all those limited tasks done (things happen, things I cannot control) and sometimes I get more done than I set myself to do. Either way, I don't keep a long, vague list of things to do sometime, but things I need or want to do today, tomorrow or at any set time. I also keep things separate. I don't ever put personal tasks and work project related tasks in the same pile. I don't even put things to do for different clients in the same pile. I approach the tasks by smaller subtasks, not as a big chunk of all-the-things-to-do. Keeping the different projects separate helps with this too. And then I do them. Or do not. Yoda would be proud.

Do you do to-do lists and are they working for you?

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