On why I hate "To-Do" Lists

I hate "to-do" lists.

I know that not everyone does. In fact, when I was really struggling with depression, Mother Dearest recommended them as a motivational technique that had helped her when she was suffering from stress.

For MD, lists were a good thing because she could tick each thing off the list and then she could look at the end of the day and see all the ticked things and say, "Look how much I got done today!" This gave her a boost so that the next day she could do even more.

For me, however, I would see all the things that remained un-ticked and say, "Look how far short I fell of what I wanted to get done today!" For me, this was de-motivational, reinforced negative views of myself and left me feeling drained - meaning that the next day, I got even less done. And the trouble is, even if I used the SMART (there's a number of different versions of what that means, the one I use is "Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-based") ethos in selecting items on the list, I tend not to get things done. In fact, the SMART thing just tells me even more emphatically that I have failed (again), which reinforces the negative messages my brain tells me. This is bad, and if I understand correctly, is the basis of how negative neuro-linguistic programming works.

Oliver Burkeman, who writes an advice column in the Observer, said at the new year (when writing about why we should ditch new year's resolutions and positive thinking), "[there is] the timeless and exceedingly effective anti-procrastination mantra that "motivation follows action", not the other way around. Wait until you feel like doing something, and you could be waiting for ever."   This is certainly true when you suffer from depression, because chances are, you never feel like doing anything! And often, action stimulates brain chemicals and synapses and neurons and all that stuff, so there are neurological reasons why action prompts motivation.

Unfortunately for me, a list does not prompt action, and therefore does not lead to motivation. It simply serves to chide me for my inaction. I don't respond well to nagging or chiding.

I have had the post you are reading now planned for at least a week; if it had been on my "to-do" list, then I would never have got started on it - I would have been waiting until I "felt like it". The reason it has taken this long to get started is that I have actually had a few other things on the go, and action has prompted motivation in that way.

Now, having explained why I don't like "to-do" lists, I do have a specific type of "to-do" list that I find very useful, and that for me does prompt action that leads to motivation.

The type of list that I do like is the schedule.

A schedule, for me, combines the SMART element of time, with a way to short-circuit past the question of motivation. It also softens or removes the element of chiding or nagging that I feel from a list. Here's how:

A schedule is a list of events, and the times when they are supposed to happen (or by which they are supposed to have happened). For instance, I have a schedule for my housework that tells me by which day of the week I am supposed to have done each room in my flat. So the first thing this does is answer the "timely" or "time-bound" element of SMART - it tells me when to do these things. A list with no time instructions simply says "you must do these things", and every second that there are things on the list that haven't been done, it serves as a constant nagging reminder to do them. My mentality being what it is, I resist the nagging and end up not doing them. But the schedule, with its suggestion "now is the time to do X, and you can do Y later" is much more specific. It also bypasses the question of wanting to wait for motivation. I know when it is that I will do X and Y, so I can prepare myself, and use the clock as a prompt, like the starting gun at a race that provides a direct sensory stimulation to action. So I get up and look at my chart for the day and see that today I have to clean the hallway. I have a plan for my day and I say, "cleaning will take place at 3pm" (fitting the cleaning around other tasks I have to fulfil such as cooking, washing up, job searching etc). Then, no matter how I am feeling when the clock comes around to 3pm, I say "Right, cleaning!" and I get the hoover out and plug it in and turn it on and before you know it, the action of rubbing the hoover back and forth has stimulated my brain enough that dusting and tidying seem less of a challenge. I hate cleaning, I am NEVER motivated to do cleaning, and even at the heightened brain state I am not really motivated. But it gets done, and it feels nice afterwards. Cleaning always feels nice once it's finished! So now I go and I tick off the "clean hallway" on my schedule to say that it has been completed, just like a normal "to-do" list. The trick though, is that the fact that there are un-ticked items no longer seems like a criticism of me - it is just that those items are not due to be ticked yet!

Of course, for one reason or another (maybe I ignore the prompt of the clock, because I really feel bleurgh), some days I don't do the cleaning that I'm supposed to - this week, for instance, I skipped on the kitchen and the bathroom. Now there are items un-ticked that should have been ticked. This does introduce a nagging element, but for me at least, it is not as bad as a "to-do" list. This is because it doesn't say, "You have failed!" It says instead, "You are behind schedule and need to catch up." For instance, today I didn't stop after I cleaned the hallway. I continued on and I did the bathroom as well. Tomorrow would normally be a rest day on my schedule, but I know that instead I will do the kitchen (since I effectively did my rest day ahead of schedule, which put me behind schedule on the other tasks). Then I will be back on schedule and I will have not failed. The list's criticism does not win!

The way that I can say I have not failed is very important. To replace that with a statement, "I am behind schedule" or "I am ahead of schedule" or "I am on schedule" is very important. With time-limited things with a clear end, the important thing is not how the work is paced as long as at the end the schedule is completed on time. With a time-unlimited thing like housework (unlimited because once you've done it it ends up needing to be done again fairly soon, so it never truly ends) it is in fact doubly important because "failed" is such a false value anyway in that instance. So by taking away the thing that says "you failed today" I remove the external, false value.

As I said, not everyone sees lists the way I do. In the Red Dwarf novels by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, Arnold Rimmer blames his shortcomings in life on what he calls the "French Dictation theory" - this is the idea that some people are scored in life in such a way that they start at zero, and then everything they do well is a positive mark (like a maths exam), but other people start with an assumed perfect score and then everything they do badly is a negative score (like a French dictation exam). Rimmer believes that his brothers' success meant that he was always marked negatively against their apparently perfect score. My attitude to lists is the "French Dictation" model - I feel like everything left on the list is a negative mark against me. Others take the maths exam version, and feel that every tick is a positive mark for them.

What I've been writing about here is my personal reaction, and my personal way of dealing with it, by using schedules instead of lists, and how that all works in my mind. Maybe it will help others, I don't know.