I like my whiteboard – when I have room to have one on my office wall. I usually dutifully list my tasks I need to do – and then promptly forget about it! It makes me feel good that I made my To-Do List, but it factors in only a portion of my organizational planning. Why?

Random vs. Prioritized Lists

To-Do Lists Overwhelming?

If I added all of my tasks on my To-Do List, I would simply get overwhelmed by all that needs to be done, and then I would get started on the easiest task first. I follow another method – its called A, B, C. I only do A tasks. When I finish my A tasks, B tasks get bumped up to A, then C tasks, if I still think they are important, get bumped up to B. I never do anything on the C list if it stays there too long. It means it isn’t important to my life. Only the A tasks are, and Bs that get the bump up to the big leagues.

Isn’t this a list? Well, yes, but it is not really a list, but a structure built around all the things I THINK I need to do. Priorities are always shifting, so it is pointless trying to get all things done. Just focus on the A tasks and everything else will take care of itself.

Prioritized by A, B or C?

The fact is, now I don’t even make a list of A, B, or C tasks. I use a sort method – I have stacks of papers, each sorted by priority and I can visually see how much needs to be done in each stack. It is a real pleasure to see the stacks get smaller. I have some Cs still there after a half year, but some C tasks ended up in the Trash because I realized after two months I really didn’t want to do that task after all. It wasn’t worth my time. That way, I keep efficient, yet get done what needs to be done. And the best part is, I don’t get overwhelmed by all that needs to be done, because I am only focusing on at most three tasks and getting good bites on my A stack to get it down.

“To-Do Lists Are Not Very Helpful”

And now this morning I found an article in the Harvard Business Review by Daniel Markovitz. He says says To-Do Lists are not very helpful.

Stop making to-do lists. They’re simply setting you up for failure and frustration. Consider the to-do lists you’re currently managing: how many items have been languishing since Michelle Bachman was leading the field for the Republican nomination? How often do you scan your list just so that you can pick off the ones you can finish in two minutes? How many items aren’t really to-dos at all, but rather serious projects that require significant planning?

He then lists five problems with To Do Lists:

• The Paradox of Choice – too many choices make you anxious.
• Heterogeneous complexity – You end up doing the easy task because, well, they are easy.
• Heterogeneous priority – OK, here he contradicts me. He doesn’t like A,B, C lists. But I think they are OK if you use common sense – if you plan on driving into the desert, an A priority is making sure your car is prepared for the trip, right?
• Lack of context – he doesn’t like tasks on paper because they all look the same. That’s why I use stacks and I can see what is more critical. Of course, you can’t put a car on the stack, but if traveling to a job site is an A priority, so is the car.
• Lack of commitment devices – You need some way of committing yourself to do the hard tasks as well as the easy ones and To-Do Lists don’t accomplish that, nor do my stacks for that matter. My commitment device is my family needs and my wallet. It is an internal motivation that makes me do the hard tasks on the A List.

“Living In Your Calendar”

His method of choice is using a Calendar for committing yourself to the tasks you need to do. It sounds like a Sales Pitch for MS Office but it makes sense. When you block out time on your calendar for your tasks, including checking mail, meetings, heads down work, and so on, you are planning your day, week, month in advance. Not a bad idea. You are living by your calendar.

You can read the entire article here.

He refers to the following articles:

• A Better Way to Manage Your To-Do List
• “No” is the New “Yes”: Four Practices to Reprioritize Your Life
• Freakonomics Blog on the New York Times website and Freakonomics