The one secret no one tells you about todo lists

Number one will shock you!

So todo lists: a tool for every hacker, biohacker, hustle culture, grind culture fellow human being. It keeps us Organised™, and On Top Of Things™, and as a result we have a Sense of Accomplishment™.

A todo list should have all the things you want to do in that day, right? Put them on the list neatly the night before, or maybe the morning of, while you drink your matcha coffee and sun your butthole while listening to a podcast on how to get 1000x done in a day.

Noon rolls around, you’re about halfway done, feeling good about yourself, and then something unexpected happens: your boiler breaks, your boss wants to see you in their office, your kid threw up in school and you need to get them, and the remaining three tasks on your list are now most definitely not going to be done.

The day is ruined!

Or you need to now do them out of order! The shock! The horror! Does no one respect ORDER in this world?!

And then you have a meltdown. Or at least a slight uneasy feeling of yet again absolutely fucking up your day and what a failure you are.

Todo lists are therefore stupid, and you resign into remaining in Chaos™ forever. Because that’s what you deserve. Can’t even keep yourself to finish off the tasks on your todo list; how are you supposed to achieve greater things?

The secret

This is going to shock you, but a todo list isn’t, or shouldn’t be, a list that you need to finish 100% for the day. It’s just a current list of pending tasks. You put stuff on there that you know you’ll need to achieve, and then as you achieve them, you tick them off.

There’s no time limit, there’s no pressure, especially no self-imposed pressure. I found this to be such a game changer (pardon the use of overly grandiose phrases) to actually get things done. I don’t feel bad about not doing what I lied to myself about that I should be able to do. I am but a human. Life happens, mostly out of my control that nonetheless still affect me and my capacity to get through my todo list.

Sometimes you revisit the list, look at the list of unfinished tasks, and realise that actually some of them aren’t relevant any more. Maybe the date to do them by passed, maybe the movie is no longer in the theatres, maybe the sale has ended, maybe you just lost interest, maybe the problem solved itself.

Sometimes you need to do a task that’s further down, because the deadline approaches, or maybe you’re at a place where doing that task right there is convenient, because it just happens to align with the other task that you can group it with.

It’s a FIRO queue. First In Random Out. Not random, but like... you get to choose which one goes out.

The whole point of a todo list is to have a record of your pending tasks, because when you do them is less important than doing them at all. It’s just a way to remind yourself that you still have those things to do.

And if you also add deadlines to the todo list, it will make it easier to prioritise doing the tasks. And if you’re feeling extra spicy, you can also add additional context, so not only do you have “Do the thing”, but also “Do the thing <website>, <context, contract number, phone number, email address>” and then you don’t have to spend additional half an hour scrambling to collect all the information you need to do the thing.

You’re not supposed to clear your todo list. You can just use it as a record of shit you still need to take care of.

And best of all, you don’t even need to use specialist software for this. If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, Notes is totally fine. Have one note that has your todo lists, and keep that one up to date. You can access it from whatever device you signed in with the same Apple ID.

On Android I use Google Keep, or really anything. Maybe Standard Notes now that I have access to it. The point is not in the tool or the web app or the typography or the design.

It’s what you use it for. You need a thing that’s convenient to check, update, and it’s with you most of the time. That’s it.