The Power of a To-Do List

One day a client and I were discussing her job. She gets to work early every day, worked through lunch and finally goes home after everyone else. Yet, despite all the hours she was putting in she didn’t feel like she was accomplishing anything. She felt unproductive, ineffective and without direction. I asked her what she expected to get done each day. She didn’t know. I asked her if she used a to-do list. She told me that she creates them all the time. Her current list was over 2-pages long but she confessed that she hadn’t looked at it in days.

We decided it was time to review her list. She found that many of the things on her list were already done, no longer needed to be done or could be done by someone else. The things that were left were mostly ideas. Her list was not a task list and it was not up to date.

She then asked herself a series of questions about each item on the list.

• What task did this idea represent?
• Should she do this task?
• Was the task worth her time?
• Was there someone else who could or should do it?
• Does it need to be done at all?
• What would happen if it didn’t get done?

Finally we considered the next steps further each idea. Then she pulled out a clean sheet of paper and using her “idea list” as a guide to create a list of 5 or 6 things that she intended to accomplish that day.

Now she does this exercise each evening. When she gets to work she has a list of things that she can realistically expect to get done that day. She finds herself able to keep her focus on the things she decided were high priority. As the day progresses she moves between the tasks she decided to focus on. She feels like she is accomplishing things.

A couple of weeks ago she didn’t bother to prepare her list. She felt confident that she didn’t need it — she knew what the next day had in store for her. What she experienced surprised her and proved to her the importance of her to-do list. She found that she spent the following day once again feeling unproductive and adrift. That little to-do list is sure a powerful tool!

Read more on this topic in this practical article: To-Do Lists That Work.

by Carrie Greene, ACC, CarrieThru, LLC, ADHD Coaching & Organizing Services.

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