Ditching To Do Lists

You're listening to the upper case life where we are actualizing our potential. I'm your host, Joseph Brewster.
Now I have a confession to make that surprises people sometimes because of how passionate I am about productivity and about the efficient use of your time. I don't use to do lists I quit using to do lists years ago. And maybe you can relate with some of the experiences I've had with to do lists.
I had experiences where I was very well intentioned and I would start my day out and put a bunch of really good things on my to do list that I would do for the day. Maybe I had ten things on my list, and then the day doesn't go quite like I thought it would. So I get three of the ten done or for the ten done.
So now I've got six things on the to do list, and then tomorrow morning I'm starting my day with a to do list that already has things left over from yesterday. And I'm adding more to it. So now I got the six things from yesterday and I put five more things on. So now my to do list is that 11 things and then over the course of a couple of days, you'll find that there are a few things on that list that just keep falling off down to the bottom and they never come off that to do list.
And you start looking at it like, Oh my God, this thing's been on my to do list since last week. I still haven't gotten this thing done. And I just found that to do lists were not an efficient way for me to manage the tasks that I was working on my day. Now, this is controversial and different people have different opinions on this.
I have a lot of friends who used to do lists, and it seems to work fine for them. But here is my experience. So what I started realizing is if something was on a to do list, I really could only do three things with it. I could do it now. I could assign a time to it to do it at a different time.
Or I could delete it. So I can do one of three things with it now, later, or just ax it entirely. And you know, what I found is people feel guilty about deleting things from To-Do List. So what happens is you have all these clinging on baggage in your to do list. It just gets bloated. You're not getting it done.
And now you're feeling guilty like, oh, I'm just not very good at being productive. But, you know, the second thing there was really key to me. You can do it now. Are you going to assign a time to it? What I've found is that usually doing it now isn't the best option unless this is a really simple and fast task.
If this is something you do in 5 minutes, definitely just do it now. Let's get it out of the way. But if this is a legitimate, large scale task, doing it now is probably not going to be the way you can approach your to do list. So you're going to have to assign a time to it. And when you do that, you're going to have to calendar it.
So here's where calendaring becomes more powerful to me than a to do list is because a to do list doesn't give it a time. And if it doesn't have a time, the odds of me getting it done are lower. So if I move it from A to do list on to a calendar and I know when I'm going to actually engage in that task, the odds of me getting it done have substantially increased.
So now I just really don't need it on the to do list anymore. Well, what happened for me was I found that I started moving things off the to do list on to the calendar, and then I stopped using it entirely. And what would happen is when a task would come up and I would know I needed to plug that in instead of going to the to do list and then the calendar, I just skipped straight to the calendar I would just put it in to my day tomorrow or later in the week and be like, OK, now I don't need it on a to do list.
I'm going to look at my schedule tomorrow and I will see when this thing is going to happen for me that all but eliminated the need for using a to do list. And I would encourage you that if you're not giving time to the task, the odds of you getting it done are very low. And the odds of you finishing everything on a to do list is very low, which means that you'll start feeling demotivated by the clutter of your to do list.
So move it over to a calendar that we can spread it out over the course of weeks. Months, and you still have the confidence of knowing that that task has a home in your schedule and you will get it done. But maybe you're not like me. Maybe you love your to do list. Maybe you find that they're more efficient for you than calendaring.
I would love to hear your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, and you can email me at: [email protected] 
I'll see you next time.