Why to-do lists set you up for failure

You've probably seen advice about why it's a great idea to maintain a rolling to-do list of projects -- big and small -- that you need to get done. Some efficiency experts recommend writing a to-do list each morning, in which you meticulously transfer incomplete to-dos from the old list to the new one every day. You might have noticed that this system doesn't work very well, and you probably just assumed that it's your own fault. But according to the Harvard Business Review, it's not you. In a nutshell, the entire system is flawed, and simply sets you up for failure.

Harvard Business Review cites several key problems with rolling to-do lists. Here are some of the most compelling:

The paradox of choice. Psychologist Barry Schwartz has written extensively about the paradox of choice -- when faced with too many options, people feel overwhelmed and respond poorly. A to-do list is a veritable smorgasbord of choices.

Heterogeneous complexity. Moreover, your to-do list invariably contains a mixture of big projects and small ones, hard ones and easy ones. Consequently, you choose the short and easy tasks almost without fail, since there's a much stronger payoff. The other tasks never get done.

Heterogeneous priority. Likewise, your to-do list is filled with tasks of varying priority. There's little doubt that you tend to do the highest priority tasks up front, and push off the rest until circumstances raise their priority as a consequence.

So what's the alternative?

Harvard Business Review recommends "living in your calendar." In other words, don't maintain a to-do list, but rather schedule these tasks right into your Outlook calendar, around your other commitments, while also accounting for the time you'll need to deal with brushfires and other unexpected priorities. This serves, in part, as a sort of commitment device, which is akin to positioning your army with its back to a river so there's no possibility of retreat from the enemy.

Melodramatic? Perhaps. But it's also likely to be more effective than that dog-eared to-do list you always carry around, but never complete.

[osh10]

There's another option.

Decision paralysis can be circumvented by breaking a list down into individual choices and collating the results. It's a technique I used to do on paper for years. I finally wrote an app for it. http://ShortListApp.com

[TBScobie]

I believe there needs to be a variety of solutions for individuals. Traditional to do lists work great for some people. Particularly if you are a great organiser and can find time to maintain your lists.

For other people the method in this article will work well. I fall in to the latter category. But one of the problems with scheduling this way is that if things change (which is often) there is a lot of re-organising to be done. To help me, I developed a piece of software that would automatically schedule some of the tasks. So when things change the system could re-create the schedule.

For me this is the best answer. It needs little time to maintain and the best tasks to work on are automatically picked. If you have Excel you can give this a try: http://timebubbl.es

[bpiflier]

This article's points would be valid points for an uncategorized task list. My weekly "green sheet" is broken into the four Stephen Covey quadrants of important+urgent, urgent+less important, important+less urgent, and less important+less urgent.

[Stephen Isienyi]

It is called stepping up to the plate, and handling one's responsibilities - for better or worse. One's failure to do so is that person's failure in totality. Lack of proper decomposition of tasks may play a part, but the person is totally responsible for either completing the contents his/her to-do list or discovering why such content either cannot be completed as planned or can never be completed successfully - and do not say "oh it is because we are using a to-do list". Simply put, the person's lack of discipline is actually on trial here: not the to-do list or any other planning tool for that matter.

[JoAnnRCorley]

So happy to see that these studies have confirmed what I've teaching for years in my workshop Organizational Strategies for the Overwhelmed- to learn more about how to apply these findings in a practical way-here'a link to the book: www.joanncorley.com

[munroconsulting]

It is not the to do list that is the problem, it is how you use one. We have all been told by efficiency experts the "best" way to do it, but if it doesn't work for you it doesn't work. I was told by one "expert" some years ago that I should manage my email by deleting all of it and that if messages were important they would be sent again. On piece of advice I never followed!

You need a system and it doesn't matter what you use as long as it works for you. If it doesn't work for you then you will stop doing it pretty soon anyway. There are countless "theories" out there and experts saying that their way is the best and only way. Listen, read and then do what works for you, but you do need a system of some kind.

[mblack78669]

To-do lists were probably a very powerful way of coping with the myriad of stuff that had to be addressed when we were on longer on the farm and had to deal with the complexities of urban living and working. They simply do not provide sufficient structure for the onslaught of information and action needed to accomplish in today's world.
When to-do lists were effective people did not have email inboxes. They did not have 24 hour news; they were not working internationally, etc. I am only 60, and my 25 year old is dealing with a world that is damn near completely different from the one I started my career in. Tools that were effective then (like to-do lists) while perhaps better than nothing, provide nowhere near what is needed to address what she has to deal with. How do you plan when the business terrain 5 years from now may be completely altered?
It is not possible to get done all that there is to get done, and what is needed is a fundamentally new way of thinking about what there is to accomplish and how to get it done.

[michael_leonard]

I don't agree at all. You just need to use an online to-do list, since the amount of to-dos tends to grow over time (a pen-and-paper to-do just doesn't scale). I use Ordinem Deed as my online to-do list, which would also be my advice.

[ChandlerTurner]

I used to have one of those lists recommended by an efficiency expert. I even had a double ranking system A, B, and C order of importance and 1, 2, 3 task order. It did not work. They were a waste of time. But that is not to say that large projects should not have a list. They should.

The best thing I got out of your article was having you point me to Barry Schwartz and a video of him talking about the paradox of choice. What an excellent video! I deal with parallel issues in creating engaging Website content for my clients. And I can tell you that a huge percentage of marketing managers simply do not understand the concepts.

Really good article.

[GarethKane]

I couldn't disagree more with this article - to do lists are the difference between a productive day and and unproductive day for me - here's how I do it

1. Monthly lists - the big picture stuff that must be done this month
2. Weekly lists - those broken down into chunks by priority and due date
3. Daily list - tasks broken down into very precise actions.

Many things on 3 take 1-5 minutes to do - programming them into outlook would take an hour...

[Shadeburst]

Thank you Gareth. New tasks have to be written down immediately or we will forget them. That is the basis of the list. It takes ten seconds to write down whether on paper or electronically. Show me someone who doesn't use a to-do list and I'll show you someone who breaks a lot of promises and has a reputation for unreliability.

[Shadeburst]

Thank you Gareth. New tasks have to be written down immediately or we will forget them. That is the basis of the list. It takes ten seconds to write down whether on paper or electronically. Show me someone who doesn't use a to-do list and I'll show you someone who breaks a lot of promises and has a reputation for unreliability.