On using to-do lists efficiently

I believe that happiness comes from maintaining a healthy balance between achievement and what Jim Carrey calls "freedom from worry"¹. I like to work and I like to daydream. As much as daydreaming is about wandering, work and personal achievement are about focus, which in turn requires motivation, clarity of purpose and control, all underpinned by a kind of discipline.

Your to-do list can become your enemy. Sometimes it gives you a false sense of control, it slowly erodes the clarity of your goals, which then weakens your motivation. You end up being controlled by your list of things to do and remember instead of focusing on doing them. You end up hoping that your tool will help you achieve self-discipline, rather than disciplining yourself to use it properly.

So what is the right way?

Here are the principles I have gathered from years of (mis)using to-do lists²:

1. Fewer tasks. Write fewer tasks and more notes. "Memo" lists are good. But do not blur the line between what you want to remember and what you need to do³. Your to-do list should be a list of things to do, not things to remember. To-do lists should describe what you need to do, not what you want to do, which belongs on the "memo" list until you actually need to do it.
2. Atomic tasks. Write precise, concise, focused, atomic tasks. Notes can be written loosely, but tasks need to be described efficiently. Keep them short and self-contained. Don't include the contextual information: link to it. Because context can change and tasks will be refiled. If a task is described too loosely or contains too much detail, it probably belongs on a "reminder" list.
3. Use scheduling and deadlines sparringly. Agendas are necessary, scheduled tasks and deadlines are useful. But do not schedule a task unless it really needs to be done on a particular date. Do not use deadlines unless really required. Over-scheduling is a way of mixing what you want to do with what you need to do. If your to-do list starts to grow with many tasks, it's a sign that you should rethink whether they really need to be scheduled or have a deadline.

Don't overload your agenda with tasks, don't overload tasks with details, don't mix tasks and notes - that's basically it.

How do these principles help with using a to-do list efficiently?

Keeping a minimal agenda gives you control, writing self-contained tasks increases your sense of clarity⁴, richer notes increase your motivation, and a minimal to-do list helps increase your sense of accomplishment.

These principles should be applied before you add anything to your tasks, notes or agenda. They can also help when you review them: is this task self-contained? Does it really need to be scheduled? Is this note something I want to remember? But regular tidying up is not a substitute for prior discipline, it should complement it.

Now I suspect most of us are bad at using to-do lists. Why?

One of the reasons may be that we confuse the process of making and maintaining a to-do list with the virtue of the list itself. The process feels like we are regaining control, clarifying our goals, renewing our motivation. But then, when we use the result of this process, it too often feels like our list has become a burden.

That's because we live under the false assumption that the benefits of the process are in the output. Otherwise, why would we care so much about building, finding or configuring our task management software? But the act of writing a to-do list can still feel good, while the list itself sucks, unless you stick strictly to the principles above.

You can delegate some of your memory, but you cannot delegate discipline, and discipline is exactly what is needed to keep your lists from becoming a burden. Discipline about what? Following what principles? If we do not know what principles to follow when making to-do lists, we will continue to try to fix our tools instead of fixing ourselves.

It took me quite a while to come up with the three above, but they fit my expectations and I think they are consistent. So here they are again:

1. Add less tasks.
2. Write atomic tasks.
3. Don't turn notes into tasks.

Be your own ideal manager, not your own hardworking intern.

If you think of yourself as a very capable intern, you run the risk of overestimating your own goodwill and available time. If you put yourself in the shoes of a good manager, you will soon realise that defining and setting tasks and deadlines requires special attention and is very different from keeping notes.

PS: If you're interested in my workflow, I wrote a blog about it: The Zen of Task Management with Org.

Feel free to discuss this on Hacker News or on reddit.

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