Your Brain on To-do List - DBR 043

Episode 43 of the Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast podcast, hosted by Larry Tribble, Ph.D., titled "Your Brain on To-do List - DBR 043" was published on August 17, 2024 and runs 56 minutes.

August 17, 2024 ·56m · Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

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Episode Description

What to do if our primary tool is not really helping us? I argue that this is the case with our to-do lists. I'll talk about why and what you can do about it.

To Do Busy Right, we are fighting three enemies: interruption, multitasking, and distraction. Distraction is the most difficult to defeat. To-do list is another tactic to deploy in that fight.

Everybody knows about to-do lists; most everybody uses them. In my experience, they are by far the most common tool.

But we don't do detail on them; we don't have a vetted process. You don't hear about doing them, right? But you don't hear about them in the same way you don't hear about toothbrushes, because it's taken for granted.

I think that you need to have a list. It's good to get things out of your head. But there are better and worse ways. Somehow, there's got to be something where I have my tasks written out. I think implementation of this can vary a lot.

The problem that a to-do list should solve…

Cal – not a quote, but from A World Without Email - [We] try to pick this 'congealed mass' of expectations, tasks, and commitments apart.

We do this because we want to figure out what to DO.

General steps for creating a To-do list

Generate the items (how do we 'know' what is on the list)
Put it somewhere (generally calendar or paper)

Part 1 What goes on the list

Normal ways to generate the list: 1) make it up from scratch daily or 2) collect it from various places.
Make it up from scratch

From scratch – Q: what's the problem? A: it's a bad question for our brains
The first part gives us brainstorming – "what COULD I do today?"
The second part gives us urgency (only)
Priority is always situational, contextual, and relative.

Collect the things from multiple places

This usually means a lack of a clear, repeatable process
It's easy to forget the odd places – everything needs to go to one place.
The challenge of multiple places – sub-prioritizing by source – pick and choose and leave everything else there then everything downstream is 'filtered'

BTW, if you're not sure you have a good process, take a look at Attention Compass.

Part 2 Where to put the resulting things

Now, you've created your list; you need to record the result of that work

Two general ways to do this – on calendar or on paper

Either way, these 'lists" are fragile and unwieldy

The first way - On paper

Sorting the list (and re-sorting) is bad. Sorting is a hard exercise for your brain
If you don't believe me, take the sorting challenge
With the list, you're putting your brain into a sorting situation – minimize the number of times you have to do this.
"On the same piece of paper" is a category – but it ignores context
What do we do when we don't finish our paper list?

Often we set that piece of paper aside for in the morning – another place to collect from
But, are yesterday's priorities automatically today's?

The second way - In your calendar

The calendar is a bad place, no better (really) than paper It's: too fragile, 'must begin at', and has no sense of probability.
If we either run short or run long, then the Calendar tool begins to show its weaknesses - fragility
When I say 'fragile' I mean it 'shatters'…
A list is a static, steady state tool - What to do with "pop-up" priorities?
The assumption when we make the to do list is, well, if nothing else pops up, this is my plan – how's that working for you?
Regardless of what you say, you have to deal with some people's emergencies
Ideally, we would have less fragility

Bottom line – with creating a to-do list, we set all kinds of brain challenges (the bad question, multiple collection areas) Our medium (paper or calendar) also presents challenges. We have a bad process.

Instead of 'to-do list' think "backlog"

What's a backlog?

Definition
It's in one place.
It is continuously sorted
It is never complete
It is fluid, so less fragile
Why a backlog cannot be on paper
A proper backlog takes care of this for us. It's built into the AC backlog and processes

What a backlog does for us

Processing takes care of the sorting
Deals with fragility
The "next thing I need to do" is already in the backlog
Daily review takes care of the overnights and the calendar

If you want to solve these problems once and for all, let me know. My clients have pre-decided, recorded those decisions, and they follow that. They think "I'm going to flexibly pursue the highest priority items in my backlog while attending to my calendar and 'pop-up' priorities." They can do this calmly with minimum hassle. They use a backlog.

What did we accomplish in this episode?

So when we're fighting distraction, we're using a rusty sword (to-do list). If we fix it (move to a backlog) we're using an upgraded weapon in the fight to Do Busy Right