How to NOT do everything on your to-do list

Every Monday is Productivity & Organization Day at Zen Habits.

Reader Jeremy Martin wrote in with this question:

This week, I started the switch to the GTD system. I have mostly learned what I know from your site and other articles about GTD, but I also have the book on order. The mental freedom it has afforded me has been such a major relief! I immediately push out all of the little thoughts that come to my head to process later, which works very well for me because I am a person with a very active mind that never seems to rest. I cannot remember when I have had this much peace of mind.

…

My problem is that if I have a list of things to do, no matter if they are high priority or personal projects for myself, I feel guilty if I am not working to shrink that list. This can lead to periods of burnout for me, where I barely get anything done. I never know when it is okay to relax, or when it is okay to take a break and play that video game, read a book, or some other leisure activity.

Do you have any tips that might help me out?

This problem is one that many of us deal with, and there’s no easy answer. I have a number of suggestions that might help, but let me first say that they are not from the GTD system — they are things you can add to the system to make it work for you. GTD should be adapted to fit your personal working style — it’s not a cookie-cutter approach. One method doesn’t work for everyone.

Here are my suggestions:

Set 1-3 Most Important Things (MITs) for the day (you might have already read about this on my site) … the top 1, 2, or 3 things that you really want to get done that day. This is an addition to the GTD system, not a part of it, but I find it helps me to focus on what’s important. GTD assumes that you will know what needs to be done, which is true, but it’s helpful to determine that at the beginning of each day, and make sure you get those things done.
Get your MITs done early in the day. Then everything else you do is extra. And if you feel like taking a break and playing, after you do the MITs, you can do this without worrying that you’re not getting important stuff done.
You’ll never get to the bottom of your list. This is something I had to learn the hard way. I would try to clear one of my context lists (like @calls), but as soon as I crossed 2-3 off my list, another 2-3 would pop up. Now, I try to just get my list down to a reasonable number if possible.
GTD isn’t about doing everything on your list. It’s about knowing what needs to be done, so that when you’re doing something else, you know that everything else that needs to be done, at some point, is accounted for in your system, and you don’t need to worry about all that other stuff at this point. In other words, get all that stuff out of your head, and into your trusted system, so you don’t have to worry about it while you focus on the task before you.
It’s also good to schedule time blocks. I will set a block for email and calls, another for writing, another for interviews (a big part of my job), etc … this way, I just try to get as much done in that block as possible, and then not worry about the rest until tomorrow’s block. This is also not a part of GTD, but a useful addition, as GTD doesn’t really advocate scheduling. But without a little bit of scheduling, as you’ve found, it can get a bit stressful, because you never know what needs to be done.

In the end, you can try these methods out, but you’ll have to find what works for you. Some of these tips might work, some might not be for you. It’s our systems that have to adapt to us, not the other way around!

See also:

How to NOT do everything on your to-do list

Every Monday is Productivity & Organization Day at Zen Habits.

Reader Jeremy Martin wrote in with this question:

This week, I started the switch to the GTD system. I have mostly learned what I know from your site and other articles about GTD, but I also have the book on order. The mental freedom it has afforded me has been such a major relief! I immediately push out all of the little thoughts that come to my head to process later, which works very well for me because I am a person with a very active mind that never seems to rest. I cannot remember when I have had this much peace of mind.

…

My problem is that if I have a list of things to do, no matter if they are high priority or personal projects for myself, I feel guilty if I am not working to shrink that list. This can lead to periods of burnout for me, where I barely get anything done. I never know when it is okay to relax, or when it is okay to take a break and play that video game, read a book, or some other leisure activity.

Do you have any tips that might help me out?

Here are my suggestions:

Set 1-3 Most Important Things (MITs) for the day (you might have already read about this on my site) … the top 1, 2, or 3 things that you really want to get done that day. This is an addition to the GTD system, not a part of it, but I find it helps me to focus on what’s important. GTD assumes that you will know what needs to be done, which is true, but it’s helpful to determine that at the beginning of each day, and make sure you get those things done.
Get your MITs done early in the day. Then everything else you do is extra. And if you feel like taking a break and playing, after you do the MITs, you can do this without worrying that you’re not getting important stuff done.
You’ll never get to the bottom of your list. This is something I had to learn the hard way. I would try to clear one of my context lists (like @calls), but as soon as I crossed 2-3 off my list, another 2-3 would pop up. Now, I try to just get my list down to a reasonable number if possible.
GTD isn’t about doing everything on your list. It’s about knowing what needs to be done, so that when you’re doing something else, you know that everything else that needs to be done, at some point, is accounted for in your system, and you don’t need to worry about all that other stuff at this point. In other words, get all that stuff out of your head, and into your trusted system, so you don’t have to worry about it while you focus on the task before you.
It’s also good to schedule time blocks. I will set a block for email and calls, another for writing, another for interviews (a big part of my job), etc … this way, I just try to get as much done in that block as possible, and then not worry about the rest until tomorrow’s block. This is also not a part of GTD, but a useful addition, as GTD doesn’t really advocate scheduling. But without a little bit of scheduling, as you’ve found, it can get a bit stressful, because you never know what needs to be done.

See also:

Posted on 27 March 2007 in GTD, Productivity & Organization |
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Comments (7)

Scott Young Says:

March 27th, 2007, 17:57 pm

Leo,

A good method I use to solve this problem is just to have daily to-do lists. Every day I write down all the things I want to accomplish the next day. I try to plan out what will take enough time so that I can work hard but still have time to rest. It is never a perfect balance, but it keeps me from always feeling I have more to do and still gets things done. Rest is essential for energy management, once you get used to this method you figure out how much work would be in a hard day, a light day or a moderate one. Best of all it is really easy to do.

I wrote about this on my blog here (although not specifically targeting work/recovery issues):

http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2006/12/19/daily-to-do-lists/

Wallet Rehab - Ways to save money Says:

March 28th, 2007, 0:19 am

Every morning in the shower, I try to decide what really needs to get done, and I refine that list on the drive to work. I normally try to write that short list of what vital ToDos down upon arrival at work. I tackle that list after I get done with reading my e-mail and RSS stuff.

zenhabits Says:

March 28th, 2007, 2:06 am

Steve and Wallet Rehab: Thanks for sharing your systems. I think the vital thing is to determine the most important things you want to accomplish for the day, at a minimum. I appreciate your tips. - leo

Alex Shalman Says:

April 1st, 2007, 16:06 pm

Good tips Zen. I guess for me it comes down to separating what is urgent from what is important. This way I can get my priorities, MITs done without constantly putting out the fires.

Ray Cox Says:

July 18th, 2007, 2:57 am

What if we summarise each project on one line.
Like newspaper or magazine headlines.
For instance, “LOCAL MAN DOUBLES INCOME IN 3 YEARS”
On another page we elaborate.
When interviewed [Your name] said that his first action to doubling his income in 3 years was to . . .
========================================
Regards
Ray

folium Says:

October 13th, 2007, 8:08 am

Hi,
I would like to recommend the book “The now habbit” by Neil Fiore.

There he points out the importance of reserving blocks of time with “Guilt free play”. Schedule your leisure time and make sure that no matter how much work you have to do..you keep this time protected.

This will change your psyche and make a subconcious drive to get more done during the GTD time. If all time is open for GTD work it will drain your power. Then you feel bad because the list is huge..and you feel you have to to something all the time to make it smaller… which does not work..at all. You can do 50 items in a day and still feel bad.

I feel that his book complements the David Allen GTD book in a very good way.

Juhani Tali Says:

January 1st, 2008, 11:18 am

It seems the only solution is to cut off some tasks. Just delete them, as soon as you understand, that it will probably get never done. Otherways the todo is an evergrowing monster that will eat you alive.

This idea - delete some things from todo-s, is very hard to implement in a team or even realize it yourself. That means consciously choosing, not by the random (the flow of time also helps with the random choice). You will choose anyway, only the method for choosing/deletion is different.

One not a very perfect solution is to create those daily todo-s. For positive side, they demand that you delete some stuff every day, refactor every day, but the timespan is way too short to really offload todo-s. It might depend, but usually I have some weeks worth of things that should get done (many never do).

At the present moment I use a todo based on freemind (only for the stuff that I need out of my mind, todo later than today). Perhaps not the “in from the up out from bottom” style, that means some stuff gets out of it only by delete ;) It is easy to write down something, rearrange it and also, you will immediately notice, if it is becoming a todomonster that will start eating you. It is not running all the time, so every time I open it I refactor. If I have real-time problems (somebody is waiting for me) then those go to some paper corner, perhaps it could be named a high-priority list along with all the notes for that task.
Besides, I don’t want to bother all that much with scheduling tasks.
So, in some idea I also use a variant of very short daily todo-s (that usually all get done and many are not written down) and then supplement it from freemind based.
If for many days all I do is from quick daily tasks then I decide that I am overloaded and just take some time to think about all the small quick tasks, what could I do about them.

If you start a todo then you can have a weird but in reality not that bad an option, use it for a month, then read it through and delete all of it, just use the del key. Some stuff will start to stink, so what, we don’t live in that a perfect world. You will remember most of the important things anyway. And it wont be that much a different from your pre-todo list time. And then start a new one.
The idea is that at first you wont have the heart to delete all the tasks that can be deleted, so try and look, what really had to be done, what was important. But you can find that out only by looking to past and comparing that to your todos.