Put “Stop Making To Do Lists” On Your To Do List

A couple of weeks ago, I was paging through my stack of old journals–or, as I like to call them, Anything Books.

I feel naked without an empty notebook at my side. And I am grateful to myself for the habit. Thanks to my notebook neurosis, I have records of my life according to me going back to age seven, along with dorky doodles, the occasional haiku, financial charts that help me make peace with the current state of my bank account, and hundreds and hundreds of To Do lists.

I come from a long line of list makers. Last I checked, my father still has on his desk the worn yellow paper he wrote up when I was in middle school (almost twenty years ago! egads!) with his lifetime bucket list. My mother is of the “What do I clean next?” list variety, the fruits of which were often left for us kids, taped to the kitchen cabinet on festive watermelon stationery. My Nana’s cursive lists are reserved for grocery shopping at Big John’s and my Gramps’ lists are all safely in his head.

Lists are in my genes.

But, after reviewing my collection of To Do lists–a modern art exhibit waiting to happen–I began to wonder if it may be time to break with family tradition. What I discovered after sifting through my scribbles and circles and strike throughs is that, I love myself a good ol’ To Do list. The actual To Do-ing? Not so much.

Of the thousands of items I’ve pledged To Do over the last few years, less than half were Done. In fact, I noticed a trend: if I wrote one To Do on Monday, it was almost always followed up by To Do 2.0 on Tuesday, 3.0 on Wednesday, and on and on. I convinced myself I was planning, but what I was really doing was procrastinating.

Simply completing a fresh new list felt like a job well done, when in reality, it was more like a job medium rare.

Today’s To Dos are no different, though they usually take the form of horrifying 50+ point spreadsheets divided by priority and category, neither of which make a shred of a difference when it comes to putting my living where my list is.

So I’ve resolved to put one final item on my To Do list: STOP MAKING TO DO LISTS.

I experimented with this approach on Monday. My fingers were itching to write it all down. Each and every Must Do, Should Do, Will Do, Have To Do, Would Love To Do, Don’t Want To Do, etc. etc. etc. (and a few more etceteras for good measure). Then I took a deep breath, and got down To Doing. Really. doing.

And you know what happened? Shit got done. The only thing I didn’t do was the To Do!

I tried it again yesterday and beat my Monday record. Emails answered. Bills paid. Sales proposals sent. Websites tweaked. Twitter tweeted. To Do done. Boom diggy.

It is the end of an era. An era of half-done To Dos becomes full out Doing.

Rachael Kay Albers

Rachael Kay Albers is a creative director, business comedian, and brand strategist gone wild. She writes and performs about branding, pop culture, tech, and identity. When she’s not muckraking about marketing, Rachael runs RKA ink, a reinvention studio and branding agency for businesses that burn the rulebook. She's also on Instagram a lot.