What to do if our primary tool is not really helping us? I argue that this is the case with our to-do lists. I’ll talk about why and what you can do about it.
 
To Do Busy Right, we are fighting three enemies: interruption, multitasking, and distraction. Distraction is the most difficult to defeat. To-do list is another tactic to deploy in that fight.
 
Everybody knows about to-do lists; most everybody uses them. In my experience, they are by far the most common tool.
 
But we don’t do detail on them; we don’t have a vetted process. You don’t hear about doing them, right? But you don’t hear about them in the same way you don’t hear about toothbrushes, because it’s taken for granted.
 
I think that you need to have a list. It’s good to get things out of your head. But there are better and worse ways. Somehow, there’s got to be something where I have my tasks written out. I think implementation of this can vary a lot.
 
The problem that a to-do list should solve…
Cal – not a quote, but from A World Without Email – [We] try to pick this ‘congealed mass’ of expectations, tasks, and commitments apart.
 
We do this because we want to figure out what to DO.
 
General steps for creating a To-do list
  • Generate the items (how do we ‘know’ what is on the list)
  • Put it somewhere (generally calendar or paper)
Part 1 What goes on the list
  • Normal ways to generate the list: 1) make it up from scratch daily or 2) collect it from various places.
  • Make it up from scratch
    • From scratch – Q: what’s the problem? A: it’s a bad question for our brains
    • The first part gives us brainstorming – “what COULD I do today?”
    • The second part gives us urgency (only)
    • Priority is always situational, contextual, and relative.
  • Collect the things from multiple places
    • This usually means a lack of a clear, repeatable process
    • It’s easy to forget the odd places – everything needs to go to one place.
    • The challenge of multiple places – sub-prioritizing by source – pick and choose and leave everything else there then everything downstream is ‘filtered’
  • BTW, if you’re not sure you have a good process, take a look at Attention Compass.
Part 2 Where to put the resulting things
Now, you’ve created your list; you need to record the result of that work
Two general ways to do this – on calendar or on paper
  • Either way, these ‘lists” are fragile and unwieldy
The first way – On paper
  • Sorting the list (and re-sorting) is bad. Sorting is a hard exercise for your brain
  • If you don’t believe me, take the sorting challenge
  • With the list, you’re putting your brain into a sorting situation – minimize the number of times you have to do this.
  • “On the same piece of paper” is a category – but it ignores context
  • What do we do when we don’t finish our paper list?
    • Often we set that piece of paper aside for in the morning – another place to collect from
    • But, are yesterday’s priorities automatically today’s?
The second way – In your calendar
  • The calendar is a bad place, no better (really) than paper It’s: too fragile, ‘must begin at’, and has no sense of probability.
  • If we either run short or run long, then the Calendar tool begins to show its weaknesses – fragility
  • When I say ‘fragile’ I mean it ‘shatters’…
  • A list is a static, steady state tool – What to do with “pop-up” priorities?
  • The assumption when we make the to do list is, well, if nothing else pops up, this is my plan – how’s that working for you?
  • Regardless of what you say, you have to deal with some people’s emergencies
  • Ideally, we would have less fragility
Bottom line – with creating a to-do list, we set all kinds of brain challenges (the bad question, multiple collection areas) Our medium (paper or calendar) also presents challenges. We have a bad process.
 
Instead of ‘to-do list’ think “backlog” 
 
What’s a backlog?
  • Definition
  • It’s in one place.
  • It is continuously sorted
  • It is never complete
  • It is fluid, so less fragile
  • Why a backlog cannot be on paper
  • A proper backlog takes care of this for us. It’s built into the AC backlog and processes
What a backlog does for us
  • Processing takes care of the sorting
  • Deals with fragility
  • The “next thing I need to do” is already in the backlog
  • Daily review takes care of the overnights and the calendar
If you want to solve these problems once and for all, let me know. My clients have pre-decided, recorded those decisions, and they follow that. They think “I’m going to flexibly pursue the highest priority items in my backlog while attending to my calendar and ‘pop-up’ priorities.” They can do this calmly with minimum hassle. They use a backlog.
What did we accomplish in this episode?
So when we’re fighting distraction, we’re using a rusty sword (to-do list). If we fix it (move to a backlog) we’re using an upgraded weapon in the fight to Do Busy Right