To-do or not to-do: why you need to make to-do lists

Surely you are familiar with the situation when there are so many work orders that you cannot even keep them all in memory. You are in a panic, how to do everything, you are exhausted day after day, and then you suddenly wake up at night and remember that you completely forgot about another report, your mother-in-law’s birthday or going to the theater with your child. Relatives are offended, the authorities reproach you for being punctual, and you sadly realize that there is no room left in your life even for simple joys.

Making a to-do list can help. Surprisingly, many note that once they write down all the things they are currently overwhelmed with, they feel that the tension begins to decrease. Why is this happening? Why, having not progressed, in fact, in any of their affairs, people nevertheless experience relief?

According to David Allen, a specialist in personal and organizational productivity, the cause of stress is not only the presence of a large number of cases, but also the effort we spend on keeping them in our memory. The to-do list in these cases is a kind of external hard drive: it stores information, freeing your brain so that it can safely focus on what it does best – on direct problem solving.

Read more:

• Why do we like lists?

Some theory

In 1956, psychologist George Miller tried to answer the question of how many units of information a person can hold in his mind at the same time, which resulted in the appearance of a work called “The Magic Number 7 ± 2” *. Subsequent research confirmed the basic idea: our consciousness can perceive and retain a very limited amount of information at one time. Therefore, it is not surprising that sometimes we forget about the presence of certain assignments – we are physically unable to handle more than nine (at best) tasks at once. Add to this the amount of information that we receive every second through our senses: smells, images and colors, sounds. For all these seemingly trifles, our consciousness is also forced to be distracted. And yet, we still try to be in time everywhere and remember everything, as a result of which we get stressed and upset: constantly distracted from one task by thoughts about another, we do not succeed either there or there. Lists help out. “Your mind won’t work until you write reminders for yourself and put them in a place that you can see,” explains Allen.

What to do

1. Get a notebook or use the appropriate application on your phone, give yourself at least half an hour and make a list of all the things that are on your agenda.

2. Don’t censor yourself or limit yourself to work-only tasks: list everything from unfinished professional assignments to household tasks and errands, to unfinished aspirations and life goals.

3. Get in the habit of adding items to your list as soon as they come to mind.

4. Experience shows that in order to better remember what you had in mind in your list, you should use at least one verb for each item. For example, if you just write “conference”, you will have to remember for a long time what exactly you had in mind. If you write: “Call Maria, clarify the details of the conference,” you will thereby create something concrete that does not require additional guesswork, allowing you to immediately pick up the phone and start completing this item without wasting time.

5. Set aside time each day to review the list. For example, you can do this in the morning during breakfast, this will help you refine your schedule for the day. And remember that the goal is not to immediately complete all the items on the list, but to streamline your thoughts and unload your consciousness.

6. If making lists is already a habit for you, make a new one every day from the general list, including only the most urgent tasks.

If you follow these simple actions day after day, you will soon notice how they will turn into your habits and gain a foothold on a subconscious level. And then you will no longer have to worry about rush at work or unexpectedly falling cases and you can focus on solving individual points, your habits will do the rest.

* The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information, Psychological Review, 1956.