Swap your 'to do list' for a 'to don't'

I am a fully paid-up subscriber to the “To do list” school of thought. I have tried various approaches – both digital and hand-written (usually in an over-priced notebook that starts with my very best handwriting and ends up illegible by page 6), and until recently I would have said I’d got it figured out quite well.

The thing is with to do lists, they only work if you can actually do it all. But a busy period of work that coincided with me sitting my teaching assessment whilst still catching up on time out of the business meant my to do list had become a mountain. A real big mountain. And at the end of every week, I would feel like I had failed to make any headway. Now I could rationalise to myself that I was working hard and there were good reasons for this, but still that feeling that I had ‘failed’ echoed in my mind every Friday evening. So, what happened? I would either feel compelled to work longer hours (& still not get it all done) or I’d end every week feeling like I hadn’t achieved enough.

I know this is a huge issue for me. I’d like to think I’m a grafter. I recently took up pottery lessons and my instructor told me I had earned the nickname “the worker” as I spent every minute of my lesson focused on making my ceramics whilst others chatted. A few years ago, I completed the Strengthsfinder test by Rath (a great book – highly recommend!) and it revealed that one of my strengths is “Achievement”. So, I know I can be highly driven and goal-focused to get my work done. But if these are my natural assets, why am I still not getting through my to-do list?   

It was at this point that I realised that the issue wasn’t with what I was doing, it was with what I wasn’t doing. I was prioritising my work, but I wasn’t prepared to let go of what wouldn’t be done. It was as if I was clinging onto the hope that somehow “this week will be the week I get it all done. This week I’ll feel better”. It wasn’t working, and I needed a new approach fast. I started to write “To don’t lists”.

So, what is a to-don’t list, and does it really work? Well firstly, yes it does. So, you can read on knowing there’s a happy ending here. A to-don’t list is like reverse prioritisation but with greater psychological benefits. In order to truly acknowledge the work I was doing, I needed to give it some dedicated focus without having the dark cloud of what wouldn’t be done hanging over me constantly. I started to look at my week ahead and decide where I would have to accept what wasn’t going to get done that week. Not never of course, just not that week. Now in some ways this is exactly the same as prioritising. To decide what you’re not going to do, you also have to decide what you are going to do right? But it’s so much more liberating than that. Being able to ‘let go’ of what’s not going to get done allows you to focus, and celebrate, on what you are able to work on.

Jordan Etkin of Duke University, North Carolina describes a to-do list as committing to “work undone”. Once it’s written down you know it’s going to get done, but it’s not done yet. It gnaws away at you in the back of the mind until you can finally cross that task off your list. And all that time it’s creating something called a ‘goal conflict’. Having too many tasks on your to-do list, all demanding your attention, distracts the brain. It leads to a decision delay (or worse, paralysis) and actually makes you procrastinate more on tasks that really do need to be done now.

Some examples from my “to do list” included a big piece of paperwork that I needed to get done but had never fully finished. I knew it would take hours, but I kept trying to chip away at many tasks all at once instead of just giving it the focused time it needed. Essentially, I thought I would achieve more if I did more. But when I switched to my ‘to-don’t list’ the paperwork got done. Why? Because I wasn’t distracted by the other things I could do. I’d made my peace with the fact this wasn’t their week. Instead I got stuck into the paperwork (boring as it was), and got it done. A task I had pushed back for 9 weeks was completed in my very first week of trying the ‘to don’t list’. And do you know what? I finished the week that Friday feeling like I had reignited the passion for my job again. A feeling that I didn’t have when I was so consumed with what I hadn’t got done that week.

It’s not an easy thing to do, but for me accepting what I wouldn’t be able to do was not only liberating, but actually far more productive than I had anticipated. The “to-don’t” approach is here to stay.