
To-Do Lists Don't Work - pitdesi
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/01/to-do_lists_dont_work.html
======
dpcan
My to-do list is a brain dump typically. I then have an area at the top of my
todo list for stuff that has to get done - like jobs for clients or server
maintenance, etc.

I also use a Notepad window on my desktop that I don't save that lists the
things that I HAVE To get done TODAY. One of those items may say "Finish ONE
item at the top of your todo list" and the others may mention various projects
that have to get SOME attention at some point during the day - if even 5
minutes.

Every day that changes.

There's no realistic way to put my todos in a calendar. I'd spend half my day
moving shit from one day to another. My first entry each day would be to
update the calendar, and if I finish that task in time, do the stuff for that
day.

I have to agree with a lot of his points about how Todo lists don't work, but
I live by the fact that if I don't write it down, it WILL get forgotten, so if
it's in a big todo list, so be it, at least I have a record of everything with
notes attached to each item.

~~~
apg
My method is like yours, basically. I use Notepad and good-old paper.

I'm leary about the idea of ever having a "living calendar". You've gone from
the one dimensional todo list of "what" to a more complex decision tree with
another dimension of "when" in addition to "what".

I do like the concept of a "living todo.txt". Sure it is unrealistic to be
able to strike off every item on your ToDo, but every day brings re-
evaluation. Approach your todo like Yoda - there is "only do, or do not".

------
user24
yes they do.

It's true that, if you want a list of "what to do next" they are not good. But
if you want a list of "what I have to do", unprioritised, subject to change,
there's little can beat just writing it down with a checkbox next to it. It
makes it real, gets it out of your head. Gives you a place to write little
related notes about it.

If you use a todo list regularly, you'll be aware of the dangers of ignoring
the bigger items, or choosing the fun items. Like I said, they work if you use
them as a list of things to do, not as a list of how or when to do them.

~~~
meric
Normally I keep my "must do" list in my head. Occasionally the list gets too
big and I can't remember it all, I write it all out in TextEdit and leave it
open and delete lines as I finish items until the list is empty. I only do
this for important items; (i.e wishing your best friend happy birthday) If
items are unimportant then its not too big a deal if I miss it today (i.e add
X to your website), as long as its not deadlined of course.

------
j45
Cool article.

Reminds me of the best calendar/to-do list software I ever used and have spent
years trying to re-locate on another mobile os: DateBk6
(<http://www.pimlicosoftware.com/datebk6.htm>)

What did it do?

1) It let you make to do items, but assign a date to them too.

2) If you didn't assign a date to them, they'd stay in your general to-do
list.

3) If there was a date for the to-do, the to-do item would show up 2 days in
advance, right on my daily calendar (not in a to-dolist).

4) Each day, I could promote items from my to-do list for that day, onto the
calendar at a specific time.

5) MOST IMPORTANT: If I didn't finish something, scheduled for a specific
time, or a date, it would carry over each day that you don't get them done.

I've never been more productive in my life than the 2 years I used this app on
Palm OS. The hotkey to a calendar means I pressed two buttons and I was
directly in the calendar to enter a to do.

No bullshit swiping, tapping, home screen, start an app, click a plus. It was
made to capture things quicker than writing them down. I've tried Android,
Windows Mobile, iOS and this Palm App still kicks everything's ass.

Just thinking about it makes me want to buy a Palm Treo PDA and start kicking
butt again.

~~~
chief8192
I'm guessing you've probably already tried it out, but if you haven't, you
should check out Things:

<http://culturedcode.com/things/>

~~~
FireBeyond
Try as I might... I can't justify, or figure out how $50 (+ $10 for a mobile
app - used to be $20) for a To Do list, however nice, is worth it.

~~~
j45
I'd pay $1000 for the right app from any app store today.

The problem is they all suck because they do a few things well and none do the
simplest the best. I've spent hundreds of dollars.

The closest I've found to being reasonable is omnifocus but it too is missing
the calendar, but it does tasks well.

~~~
mynegation
I also had Palm m515 and DateBk in the good ol' days. If you have iOS device,
try Pocket Informant. This is what I use now and I think it covers most, if
not all, of your requirements and syncs with toodledo and google calendar too!

~~~
j45
What's another $12.99.

I have to admit though, I'm kind of scared, because it appears to have the
same level of detail that DateBk did.

I purchased the new version of DateBk called Pimlical for Android and tried it
out today. Not quite there but definitely a possibility. Since I'm on iOS I'll
try it out.

If this works, I can't begin to put in words how indebted I'll be fore the
reco

------
chimeracoder
This post should really be titled 'How Not To Create a To-Do List'

I'm a firm believer in the GTD (Getting Things Done) school of thought, which
addresses many, if not all, of these concerns .

Paradox of choice: You should never have a choice of when to do items.
Instead, pick a time every day/week to organize your to-do list and figure out
when things should be done, and in what order. This should be _separate_ from
the time that you're doing tasks. So when you reference your to-do list, the
choice is always simple: 'Can I do the next item on the list _right now_ or
not?'. (In practice you bend this rule slightly - but only by a little bit...
a lot less than most people think).

Heterogeneous complexity: See above. Also, write down time estimates for each
task and time yourself.

Heterogenous Priority: To-do list items _should_ be on your calendar. A
calendar is a to-do list, and a to-do list is a calendar. If your two are
separate, you'r doing it wrong (according to GTD). And if it's on your to-do
list, it should be done today or not at all. If you didn't get to it, before
immediately bumping it to tomorrow, ask yourself whether it really needs to be
done, and whether it actually fits with your long-term goals.

Lack of context: GTD specifically recommends partitioning tasks by context.

Lack of commitment devices: Having the list pre-sorted (ie, sorted at a time
separate from when you're actually 'doing work') addresses this somewhat. It's
not a cure-all, but honestly, if you're having trouble committing yourself to
do the tasks as you prioritized them last night, I can't see how you'd be any
better off with _no_ structured list guiding you.

As for that last element: Yes, you _do_ need to learn how to say 'no', but if
you say 'no' based on a careful, logical evaluation of your to-do list at a
time when you're not doing work, you'll be making a much wiser judgement than
if you say 'no' because you're feeling overwhelmed by all the things that
you're keeping in your head.

~~~
stdbrouw
"A calendar is a to-do list, and a to-do list is a calendar." Well, no, a
calendar is an absolutely-have-to-do-at-that-specific-time list. I don't see
how you could've gotten that idea from GTD, because David Allen recommends not
using your calendar for todos that you'd _like_ to have done today, but don't
_need_ to have done today. Conflating calendar and to do list will quickly
lead to what dkarl calls the "Do this now or you're a bad person" phenomenon,
and lead you to stop using todo lists altogether because they're so
depressing.

The biggest win of todo lists for me (I use the GTD-esque Things) has been
that it gives me some assurance that I've got everything that I have to do or
want to do (even someday/maybe projects) written down and in one place, so it
doesn't soak up cognitive energy throughout the day that would be better spent
just doing things.

------
aaronf
To-do lists do work. What the author lacks is a today list.

The purpose of the to-do list is to keep track of everything you have to do
for the rest of your life. You should not be working off of it everyday or, as
the author notes, it will overwhelm/paralyze you.

The purpose of the today list is to focus on one day at a time. A today list
is a subset of the to-do list, the items you need to think about that day.

This simple distinction goes a long way. With a today list, you can actually
get through your day, and feel good when the list is done.

------
yawn
I have tried several different software solutions, including writing my own
web apps, but I always give them up.

This is the only solution that has worked in the long run for me: a simple
text file. Each day I start a new list of items by putting today's date at the
top of the file. Only things I can finish that day are added. The next day, if
I didn't finish something and still consider it important, it's copied to that
day.

~~~
tarunkotia
Yawn,

I can relate to your problem very much. I've also tried multiple software and
finally I have come back to use notepad on Windows. I have done a small setup
to make my todo list simple and accessible:

1\. Press f5 to get date time stamp

2\. List down all your task without numbers one below the other in the
beginning of the day or as the tasks get assigned to you.

3\. As you complete each task write DONE in front of it.

4\. At the end of the day group all the tasks with DONE if front of them below
the date you completed, pushing the rest of task below

5\. Come back next day to your task list and add an empty line. The tasks
without DONE are still pending, follow from step 1.

How to make your todo list accessible on a Windows machine:

1\. Created a "TODO" directory and add a text file call it todo.txt

2\. Create a shortcut of the file, rename it to "todo" and cut-copy-paste the
shortcut to C:\windows\system32

3\. Now press "Windows key + R" and type "todo" in the command window. This
will open your list.

I have been using the list for over 6 months now and this is how it looks:

9:39 AM 1/16/2012

DONE ESA Request retrieve the lost records

DONE Update the email notification when esa request status changes

9:04 AM 1/17/2012

DONE Follow up with CA about MS Project installation.

10:23 AM 1/19/2012

DONE Site Usage Report 1. Change Column order 2. Sort By 3. Relative Path

3:55 PM 1/20/2012

DONE Complete the code for MUSE FeedIn

Document the feed in issue from Pedagogue.

MUSE Win 7 MUL compatibility

Clarity DDS BO Server specs.

~~~
j_s
You can assign a unique shortcut key directly within a shortcut's 'Properties'
if desired (either this or just hit the Windows key and start typing to let
Windows Vista+ search for it); in an everything's-working-perfectly world the
text file and/or the shortcut can be anywhere. Anything unnecessary in the
system folders tends to be bad news.

------
gwern
A week or two ago, I read the book _Willpower_ by psychologists Baumeister &
Tierney. They include a chapter praising To-Do Lists.

Who should I believe, 2 famous psychologists who basically invented the entire
subfield dealing with willpower, or a consultant business blogger?

~~~
arundelo
1\. Tierney is a journalist. (Neither Wikipedia nor his nytimes.com bio seem
to specify what his degree is in.)

2\. Though this was not its intent, Markovitz's article can be taken as a
warning about particular failure modes of to-do lists rather than an
unequivocal critique of them.

I agree with your point, though.

(Edit: Maybe you were thinking of Dianne M. Tice.)

~~~
gwern
> 1\. Tierney is a journalist. (Neither Wikipedia nor his nytimes.com bio seem
> to specify what his degree is in.)

Whups. You're right; I went back and it seems I confused the journalist
Tierney with Baumeister's 'protege', Heatherton.

------
polyfractal
I forget where I heard this routine (Lifestyle Business Podcast maybe?), but
I've found it very helpful. It goes something like this:

-Write to-do items on a post-it note

-Scratch them off as you accomplish them

-When the majority of the post-it is scratched, start a new note, beginning with the few items that did not get finished from the last post-it

-Evaluate the items that you didn't accomplish from the last post-it. How many times have you copied them from one post-it to another? If more than twice, it is either not important or you are seriously procrastinating. Do it, outsource it or just delete it and move on.

~~~
tnuc
My entire working day revolves around a list in front of me that I treat just
like this.

Post it notes just aren't big enough for the amount of items I have to do most
days.

------
AerieC
I can agree with Markovitz's point that todo lists are not the best
productivity boosters available, but I don't really agree with his conclusion
that putting everything in your calendar is an improvement.

Some points:

1\. A todo list is better than nothing. It may not make you a productivity
god, but it will keep you conscious of what you have to do for the given
period (day, week, month, whatever).

2\. Your calendar likely isn't set up to function as comprehensive task-
management software. I use outlook at my office, and sure it has some task-
list features, but they're woefully lacking in features. I posit that doing
your todo list in outlook is of no benefit over doing your todo list in
notepad. To use the language of the article, there's still the problems of
"heterogeneous complexity", "lack of context", and no "commitment device".
Sure it gives you a better idea of priority (e.g. my calendar says I have to
do this right now) and how much time a task MIGHT take, but I can ignore
outlook popups just as easily as I can my notepad todo list. And trust me, I
have.

Using a calendar to schedule your work doesn't solve the underlying problems
that cause most people's productivity to suffer: motivation and distraction.
If my motivation to complete a task is low, having it on a todo list vs a
calendar (or even in comprehensive task-management software) makes no
difference--I still don't want to do it, and I can and will still be
distracted by crises, email, and the internet in general.

------
kls
I actually have given thought to writing an app that works along the same
lines. A shared planner that someones and their groups can use. Take for
example a household, everyone in the household can enter tasks, either their
own or group tasks. When they do, they place a priority on them and a
estimated time to complete. Tasks can have subtasks, this way a group of tasks
can be rolled up into a task project. As well, scheduled tasks can be entered
into it, that have very specific time requirements. Such as go to the doctor
at X time/date. From there they system can generate a calendar of tasks that
are to be completed. The user can then mark a task as completed or not, if it
is not then the task list is recalculated based on priority and schedule
tasks. I saw the same issue as the author, tasks have to transfer to the
calendar, if they don't they get skipped. The thing that a system like this
would do is show the aging of a task is being procrastinated on.

The other idea that I had was to have a checkbox on every task that asked if
someone could be hired to do a task. If the answer is yes and at a certain
aging point, the app would ask if they want to solicit bids on the task, the
app would then place the task in a market place where people could bid to
perform the work of the task. This way people could hire to complete the task
once they realize that it has languished in their queue.

------
nguyentphai
I posted a comment there, but I thought I'd bring it here as well.

His title should be "To-do-lists-without-context-and-forced-prioritization
don't work"? It's clear it's not living by the calendar that solves
everything, it's the proper elimination of unnecessary tasks and doing the
things that are important first. I think the best part is the one sentence
that said "whether or not you can or should (say yes) to a project". That's
the hard part. That's the part I think we all need to learn, and doing that
first is a priority over changing how you manage your lists.

I've seen too many managers at big companies who live by the calendar. It's
obvious. They always say, "let me check my calendar first". Is this how you
should be managing your priority and time? Shouldn't your decision to do
anything be on the importance and urgency of your tasks? (You can always delay
the less important tasks).

I think this is a failure in most time management strategy. Anyways, I'm a
developer of Priority Matrix (www.appfluence.com), which is about managing
priority, rather than time, and I'm bias against the calendar as a pure way to
manage anything. I think it's a hard problem to solve, and I do spend half by
time writing lists, and half my time determining what's critical.

Interesting post. Thanks for sharing.

------
Uhhrrr
For me, To-Do Lists solve the problem of choice paralysis. They don't solve
the author's problem, which others have pointed out is time management.

------
alexwolfe
I created <http://goalstacker.com> to address this problem. It's not the list
that kills you, its the list you can never finish that kills you. In order to
be productive each day, its nice to have a small set of obtainable goals that
you can actually finish. This list need to take into account how much time you
have and how much time it takes to complete these tasks.

I think the author's method is pretty close, the only problem with a calendar
is that if you don't finish the task then one of two things usually happen:

1\. You forget about it and it fades away never to be completed. 2\. You have
to keep moving it to a different day until you complete it.

------
pors
I agree, to-do lists don't work, and the proposed agenda thing won't work
either (not for me at least). I am hooked with GTD
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done>) and use
<http://activeinboxhq.com/> with gmail. It sounds like an advertisement, but
this method really works for me and gives me control over my workflow (100s of
emails per day).

~~~
j_s
The key takeaway for me from GTD was the need for 'what is the [very specific]
next action' instead of a TODO as a pile of stuff.

------
nradov
Bad advice. To-Do lists can work well, if you have the right tools and use
them effectively.

I know the cool kids love to criticize IBM Lotus Notes but it has several
great features for managing To-Dos.

* To-Do documents can be created with priorities and deadlines (including repeating).

* To-Dos can be assigned to yourself or others.

* To-Dos can optionally display on your calendar, and if you like it will show all overdue To-Dos on the current day.

* Any e-mail can be easily converted into a mini To-Do with a follow-up date and comment.

------
padobson
This is true for me. Now I just need a simple interface to list out everything
I need to do, and then move it to a calendar so it gets done.

~~~
fabiandesimone
For the simple interface you might want to check Workflowy
(<http://workflowy.com>). Not sure if it can integrate with a calendar.

I use Daylite. A bit heavy sometimes and the learning curve is steep, but once
you get the hang of it, is fantastic.

------
aheilbut
I recently started using Checkvist, and like it better than anything else I've
tried so far, because

\- it supports hierarchies;

\- tasks can be assigned due dates, and can then be viewed in chronological
order;

\- tasks can be tagged;

\- it's on the web

------
dkarl
I think what the author is trying to say is two things:

1) It's a bad idea to have a "Do this now or you're a bad person" list. I have
to admit I've tried that many times, and it never had the effect I hoped for.
It's also bad to keep an "ARRRRGH I WILL DO THIS I ABSOLUTELY WILL I COMMIT MY
LIFE TO THIS" list, because at some point you fail to live up to the title,
and then you just feel silly. I learned that through bitter experience.

2) TODO lists don't solve all the problems that might prevent you from doing
the things on your list. To me, saying TODO lists don't "work" for this reason
is a little bit like saying that taking a GPS and a first aid kit when you go
backpacking doesn't "work" at preventing you from dying in the woods. I mean,
how much can you expect? _The Chinese general Han Xin used geography as a
commitment device: he positioned his soldiers with their backs to a river so
they couldn't run away from the enemy._ Oh, wow, I guess you can expect a lot.
Hmmm... maybe Perl has a command for threatening the user with death.
Actually, I'd be amazed if it didn't. It's probably one of those default
behaviors I'm always suppressing. I'll have to work out the details, but some
kind of cron job approach seems promising.

Personally, I find that TODO lists work well as a small tool in the UNIX
environment of life. It works well with other simple tools. For example, when
I get in the car leaving work, I need to combine sex different kinds of
information. There may be a seventh, but I can't remember what it was, so I'll
just keep things moving.

1\. I need to know how tired I am -- I basically just ask myself. If I'm too
tired to answer, I take a nap in the parking lot and ask again when I wake up.

2\. I need to know if I have any plans for the evening -- my calendar tells me
that.

3\. I need to know how good a case I can make for slacking off that evening,
i.e., how much I have worked out, studied, read, and kicked ass at work that
day and earlier that week -- for that I consult my memory. (I find it gives
more desirable answers than other devices.)

4\. I need to know what kind of things I can or need to get done. That's the
TODO list! When I start to think my TODO list is so large and complex that it
seems to need some kind of data model of its own, then that means I spend a
few minutes a day reviewing it and tidying it up. It isn't wasted time. There
are some things I write off and say, "Screw it, if I need to know this I'll
look it up in some kind of information system." My TODO list is more important
than that. I want to review what's on it on a regular basis, because that
stuff needs to be in my _brain._ Maybe not completely and precisely, but at
least a quick scan every day. When it gets too big to scan over quickly in
five minutes and completely rework in twenty, then I know I'm making plans
that are much too elaborate to ever correspond with reality. "Plans are
useless; planning is essential." Your TODO list is a "plan" and is therefore
constrained to be very modest in scope. Artifacts produced during "planning"
should be immediately thrown away, since 1) they have already served their
purpose, and 2) they should be recreated from scratch every time.

5\. I need to know where the things on my calendar and my TODO list are so I
can estimate driving distances and aggravation. For that, I use (in descending
order of priority) my memory, map links in my calendar, Yelp, and Google
search. I may also need to know what time various stores close (memory, Yelp,
Google.)

6\. I need to know what time it is. My phone tells me this.

Trying to keep all of these things in a single place seems both challenging
and pointless. Also, there are also many subtleties.

For example, on some days, working out is slacking off, because I use it as a
way to put off some coding I planned to do. Clearly, though, if I've been
working out a lot, then I've earned the right to slack off, but not the right
to slack off by working out, because that can lead to injury. This is a
difficult problem to systematize. I have an elegant proof that an org mode
solution exists, but constructing a concrete instance has defeated me thus
far. At the moment, I'm trying to devise a solution using ruled and unruled
index cards, paperclips, and color-coded rubber bands. Suggestions would be
welcome.

On other days, I don't have the discipline to work out, so I'm lazy and write
code instead. It even happens that I can't face the prospect of going to the
gym like I planned, so I give myself the night off, and feeling freed from the
boring, mundane obligations of middle class life, I find that what I really
want to do is go to the gym.

(If you've followed along this far, then I hope you are starting to suspect
that there is only one information processing device known to humankind that
is intelligent, sophisticated, and irrational enough to model this behavior.)

Some days I just open a bottle of wine and order a pizza, and I earn this
indulgence by going to bed at 10pm and getting up at six to study. That seems
easy enough to plan out in a calendar, but what if my girlfriend calls me at
9:55pm and asks me what I'm doing? My calendar will be invalidated, and I will
be too distracted to correct it. This situation also raises the question of
what kind of list or other device I should use to decide what to do the
morning after a night of drinking, because I usually wake up at 5am with not
much intelligence or physical stamina but with infinite patience, which
sometimes results in me cleaning my apartment for three hours, which is, like,
three month's worth of cleaning for me. What would Han Xin make of that, eh?

Seriously -- not that any of the foregoing was false, because it's actually
all true, except for the part about index cards -- life is too complicated to
make anything but the roughest plans. This is as much true of buying groceries
as it is of personal development as it is of software development. Motivation,
discipline, and all such things cannot be handled by lists and calendars. They
are handled by 1) recognizing what they are and reflecting on them, and 2) if
necessary stopping, closing your eyes almost all the way, and calming yourself
until you are able to reflect on them. At least, that's what works for me. And
if that fails, I give myself the night off. If your decision-making is still
consistently wrong even after you've made a strong effort to put yourself in a
calm and open frame of mind, then it's because you're tired, sick, or mentally
conflicted; tend to your physical and mental health first, and the rest will
follow.

Or maybe you really, honestly, with your best heart, do not want to do what
you are trying to make yourself do. „Der Mensch kann zwar tun, was er will,
aber er kann nicht wollen, was er will.“ You can do what you want, but you
can't want what you want. I.e., saying that you consistently fail to do what
you want, even when you take care of your physical and mental health, is like
saying select is broken. When you think you're having problems doing what you
want, it's more likely that you don't really want what you wish you wanted.
Not that you have to accept that -- I think it's overblown to say you can't
want what you want. It's just another thing that requires work. And if you
don't _really_ want to want it, my advice is just to forget it, but you can go
all Inception on your motivations if you want (... to want... to want....)

If it still matters, I keep three TODO lists. I have an Evernote note which
contains (at the bottom) my long-term shopping and TODO list and (at the top)
my daily shopping and TODO list. It's in Evernote so it's always just a few
seconds away. Every day, I copy (NOT move) a few items (or none) from the
long-term TODO to the daily TODO, taking into account various due dates,
business hours, driving constraints, and how much time and energy I expect to
have. (This is a pretty easy problem for the human brain to generate a
reasonable solution for, and I defy anyone to produce a system or computer
program that can do it.) Often the "daily" version of a long task says "start
X" or "continue X" or "spend twenty minutes on X." If an item from the long-
term list gets completed during the day, I remove it from the long-term list
later. (I rarely forget to remove an item from the long-term list, and when I
do, it's AWESOME.) My work TODOs are handled in org mode. They sit at the
bottom of my work log, and I touch them every day, reworking and reordering
them as necessary. They're much simpler to handle: I just do them in order,
modulo dependencies. Yet even at work I make occasional concessions to
enthusiasm or the lack thereof.

