Don’t Neglect the To-Do List

Don't worry if your to-do list starts to look like an excerpt from a Dickens novel. If your to-do list is empty that's when you need to start worrying.

As with many NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) winners this year I have been trying to avoid eye contact with the gargantuan to-do list that developed in the month of literary abandon. November was an adventure in writing but sadly, December, despite its Christmas cheer, is burdened with the harsh reality of what was neglected: A big stack of work.

To-do lists are great and they come in all different shapes and sizes. Sometimes they’re vigorously penned on a blank corner of an otherwise busy sheet of paper. Sometimes they’re neatly typed on a word processor, or a combination of Google Tasks, ShoveBox notes and a handy iPhone App with a little red number in the top corner that seems to be eagerly trying to reach 100.

Personally my favourite to-do lists are the ones that develop when all others have found their way into the little bin under the desk. The neat, be-all and end-all, mother of a to-do list, prioratised by deadline date with the weighted mean of how much time it will take to complete.

Unfortunately, however, such a to-do list has never been in the same vicinity as my eyes and I’d need a highly skilled helper monkey to maintain such a clear outline of what needs doing.

“your to-do list doesn’t have a beginning, and it hasn’t had one for a long time”

No matter what form your list takes it can be very off putting when you see how much it is growing. This is where you stop, take a deep breath and realise why you have all this work to do. It’s not because you took time to work on another project or you’ve been avoiding it because you don’t like it. Hopefully, you’re one of the lucky ones who, like me, actually enjoys the work they do. Then you can just look at your increasing number of tasks and be glad you’re working on things you enjoy doing.

Plus, once you finally stop procrastinating, reorganising what goes where on the list and actually take on the responsibility of completing task number one, the heavy burden, you built up around yourself, is gone, you’re on your way to working through the list. By the time you hit task number two you are already satisfied that work is getting done and you redevelop your own work flow.

Find your own way of doing things, don’t waste your time downloading list makers with fancy prompt messages that integrate nicely in your web browser or Google Calendar or email, Blackberry, Android, iPhone, Cosmic Dohickey, and various other gadgets that allude to productivity. Work your own way and keep your own personal to-do list, either mental, written, typed, RSS fed or directly linked to the inner sanctums of your brain via a private satellite, built to increase your productivity and feed Sky TV directly into your eye sockets.

The important thing to remember is your to-do list doesn’t have a beginning, and it hasn’t had one for a long time. It’s just part of your life and you’ve been working through it for years. When the day comes and you have completed everything on the ultimate to-do list, of all the tasks you’ll ever do, that is the day you sit back and retire, and start on your “things to see and do when I retire” list.

Tags: Android/Blackberry/Christmas/Cosmic Dohickey/Google Calendar/Google Wave/iPhone/NaNoWriMo/National Novel Writing Month/RSS/ShoveBox/Sky TV/Tasks/To-Do List/Writing
Posted in Blog by Paul |