I just spent three hours transferring three plants into larger pots and amending a little over three cubic feet of soil. It was a pleasant day – not particularly warm, and certainly not the kind of weather that makes gardening feel like hard labor. But there were five other items on my list that have not been addressed and yet, somehow, the gardening got done. Gardening was not planned. It simply became the thing I found myself doing.
I know how my mind tends to operate. I know its preferences, and even some of its peculiar ways of taking me from one thing to another. Clearly, knowing that doesn’t necessarily mean I am familiar with its discourses.
Because there was that other time when I took the train to spend the day with my daughter. I left home at 8:30 in the morning to catch the 9:00 eastbound train and didn’t return home until around 5:00 that afternoon. It was, by any reasonable measure, a full-day event. And yet, it wasn’t on my To-Do List either – even though I had planned the visit nearly a month in advance. So what exactly is happening here? Why do some things make their way from intention to action without ever appearing on my To-Do list, while other things sit pending?
Perhaps the To-Do List isn’t always telling the whole story. Perhaps there is another conversation taking place – somewhere between intention, attention, motivation, and the mysterious workings of the mind.
1. Life Changes
I have had a long, somewhat checkered relationship with ups and downs, periods of consistency and inconsistency in keeping weekly lists of things to do, going all the way back to October 1990. Years later, in April 1998 I repurposed the list around New Year’s resolutions, from which I developed monthly and then weekly To-Do Lists. Initially, I was determined that anything that was not directly related to those resolutions would not make it onto the list. Over time, however, new items began finding their way onto it as circumstances changed at work and at home. In one year, I travelled more unexpectedly. So, some of the resolutions themselves were eventually carried over to the following year, while others were crossed off altogether. Life, it seemed, had its own way of introducing unexpected changes – changes that altered, redirected, and sometimes simply augmented the course of our lives.
2. Unrealistic expectation
It seemed reasonable at the time. When I wrote my resolutions, I believed the steps needed to accomplish them could simply be developed into monthly and weekly lists of things to do. But looking back, my imagination was clearly reaching beyond what I could realistically control. One such item was an ambition that grew out of what seemed like a promising opportunity.
In the early 1990s, the real estate market was hot, particularly for people who could buy properties with a modest investment, make improvements, and resell them for a profit . So, one year, I set a goal of finding an opportunity to get into the sub-prime market myself. I saved nearly $8,000 and eventually found what seemed like the perfect opportunity: an unoccupied two-story townhome in a gated community. It felt like a dream come true – or so I thought.
Then, one evening, the owner’s ex showed up and demanded an additional $12,000 – money that was not part of the seller’s original agreement. Suddenly, the opportunity I had carefully imagined no longer looked anything like the one I had put on my list – paper. In the backdrop of 2008 recession, that modest real estate investment would later proved unsustainable.
The problem wasn’t that I had a goal. The problem was that I had treated an uncertain opportunity as though it were something I could simply put on a To-Do List and accomplish.
3. Choices
In the context of To-Do List, I can ask myself the deeper question of why we choose certain things to put on the list, why we choose to do some things and not others, and how the act of choosing can reveal what we actually value – sometimes differently from what we say we value.
in many ways, To-Do is a list of choices. Before something can become an item on the list, I have made choice that it is worth doing. That may sound obvious, but I have come to realize that choosing what to do is not always as simple as deciding what needs to be done. Some things are obligations. Some are responsibilities. Some are ambitions. Some are things I want to do simply because they interest me. And then there are things that seem important when I write them down but lose their importance when the moment comes to actually do them.
Every time I write something on my list, I am making a small commitment to myself. I am saying, in effect, this matters enough for me to give it some of my time. But a list can also make that commitment look more certain than it really is. Writing something down does not make it happen. It only records my intention to make a choice later – to give that item my attention, my time, and perhaps my energy.
That distinction became clearer to me as I looked back at the lists I had kept over the years. Some items were completed exactly as I had intended. Others were repeatedly carried from one week to the next, sometimes for months. A few disappeared from the list altogether without ever being completed. And there were still others that were never written down but somehow became the most important things I did.
Perhaps because choosing is not a one-time act. The choice I make when I write something down is made under one set of circumstances. The choice I make when I return to that item a week later may be made under entirely different circumstances. My priorities may have changed. Something unexpected may have happened. I may have learned something I did not know when I first wrote it down. Or perhaps I simply discovered that what seemed important on paper did not have the same importance in my life.
This is where a To-Do List becomes more interesting to me than just a productivity tool. It becomes a record of how I make choices over time. The list shows what I said I intended to do, but the completed items reveal what I actually chose to do. There can be a considerable difference between the two.
And that difference is not necessarily a failure.
If I spend three hours moving plants into larger pots when five other things remain unchecked on my list, I have made a choice – even if I never formally wrote it down. If I spend an entire day traveling by train to see my daughter, I have made a choice. Those choices may not have satisfied the demands of the list, but they satisfied something else that, at that particular moment, mattered more to me.
Perhaps this is why some items remain on my To-Do List for so long. It may not be that I don’t have the time to do them. I may simply be choosing other things.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether my lists have been telling me something I wasn’t paying attention to. They have not only been showing me what I planned to do; they have also been showing me what I repeatedly chose not to do.
And that may be an entirely different kind of information.
Perhaps the real question is not “Why didn’t I get everything on my list done?” Perhaps it is “What did I choose to do instead – and why?”
That question takes the To-Do List beyond scheduling. It turns it into a quiet record of priorities, circumstances, values, and the choices I make as I move through life.
4. Measure of Importance
If a To-Do List is a record of the choices I intend to make, then perhaps it is also a way of measuring what I consider important. But importance is not always as easy to measure as I once thought. I used to assume that the items at the top of my list were the things that mattered most, and that completing more items meant I had made better use of my time. Looking back, I am not so sure. The number of checkmarks on a page tells me how much I accomplished, but it does not necessarily tell me whether what I accomplished was important.
Some things are important because they have to be done. Paying a bill, responding to an email, repairing something around the house, or completing a work assignment may carry a consequence if left undone. Other things are important because they contribute to something I hope to achieve in the future. Still others may have no measurable consequence at all. Spending an afternoon with someone I love, tending to my garden, taking a walk, or simply allowing myself to follow an unexpected interest may produce nothing that can be checked off a list. Yet, when the day is over, I may remember those moments more vividly than the five tasks I had originally intended to complete.
This makes me question the way I have sometimes measured the success of a day. Was the day successful because I completed everything on my list? Or was it successful because I gave my time to the things that genuinely deserved it? There is a subtle difference between what is urgent, what is necessary, and what is important. They can be the same thing, but they don’t have to be.
Perhaps that is why my To-Do Lists have never been entirely reliable measures of how I spend my life. They measure activity fairly well, but importance is something different. An unchecked item may be important tomorrow but not today. An item that was never written down may turn out to be the most important thing I did all week. And something I once considered important may gradually lose its place as my circumstances, interests, and relationships change.
Maybe the better measure is not how many things I can cross off, but what those things mean to me when I look back at the time I spent doing them. A To-Do List can tell me where I intended to put my time. My choices tell me where I actually put it. And perhaps the difference between the two is where I begin to understand what I truly consider important.
CONCUSION
After years of keeping To-Do Lists, I have come to see them differently. I still believe in writing things down. A list gives shape to intentions, helps me remember what might otherwise be forgotten, and gives me a place to begin. But I no longer see it as a contract with myself – or as a measure of whether I have had a productive day.
Life Changes. What seemed important when I wrote my list may not remain important when the day arrives. Circumstances change, opportunities appear, people need our attention, and sometimes something entirely unexpected becomes more meaningful than anything we had planned. My list can remain the same while my life has moved in another direction.
Unrealistic Expectations. I have also learned that I can put almost anything on a list, but writing it down does not make it achievable. Some goals depend on circumstances beyond my control, on other people’s decisions, on timing, or simply on opportunities that may never materialize. A To-Do List is useful for organizing what I can do; it becomes less useful when I treat it as a guarantee of what I can make happen.
Choices. Every list represents choices. I choose what deserves a place on it, and then, when the moment comes, I choose whether to give that item my time. Sometimes I follow the list. Sometimes I don’t. And sometimes the things I choose to do – visiting my daughter, tending to my plants, responding to an unexpected need – never appeared on the list at all. Those choices are not necessarily failures to follow the plan. They may simply be evidence that something else mattered more at that moment.
Measure of Importance. Perhaps this is the greatest lesson my lists have taught me. A completed list may show me how much I accomplished, but it cannot tell me how meaningful those accomplishments were. Five crossed-off items may represent a productive day, while one unplanned act may represent a meaningful one. The value of time cannot always be counted in checkmarks.
So, I will continue to keep my To-Do List. But I think I will look at it with a little more humility. It is a guide, not a command; a record of intentions, not a prediction of the future. It helps me organize my time, but it does not get to decide what my time is worth.
Perhaps the real purpose of a To-Do List is not to make sure that I do everything I wrote down. It is to help me become more conscious of what I intend to do, what I actually do, what I choose to leave undone, and why.
Because at the end of the day, the most important thing may not be how many boxes I checked.
It may be whether I spent my time on what truly mattered.
Goldenseal