THE TROUBLE WITH to-do lists is that they don’t excite and stimulate our minds to want to get things done. Usually we don’t finish them anyway, which immediately has a negative effect.

Now I’m not saying we should do away with them entirely. We all need reminders of what we’ve got to do. What I’m saying is that they serve a useful purpose of reminding us of things we need to do, but that they’re not actually going to make us more productive.

What you need is a done list. Seeing what you’ve actually achieved will spur you on. Of course, you may look back and think how little you have achieved, but hopefully this will also spur you on even more.

One of the dangers of to-do lists is that we think we’re being productive because we’re ticking things off a list. But how many of those things you’re ticking off are things you truly value? The benefit of a done list is that you only put things on it that are of value to you.

So how do you decide what is of value and is worthy of putting on your list? Well, for starters you don’t want to put everything on it – like “Called Debra in accounts” or “Had meeting with marketing”. Otherwise, it just becomes a completed to-do list.

A good rule of thumb is to only put things on it that you’ll look back at and be proud of at the end of the year.

Preventing stress

To-do lists are about goals, a done list is about achievements. One of the big differences of a done list, as opposed to a to-do list, is the positive effect it has on your brain.

A to-do list gets the things you have to do out of your head and onto paper. It declutters your brain. The trouble is, how often do you complete the list? I find I do half of it and then the rest gets transferred to the next day’s list.

A long to-do list means: “we’ve got a lot to do” – it doesn’t mean we do a lot.
Unconsciously, it changes from a to-do list into a “what you haven’t done list” and creates more stress and anxiety.

A done list of things you have achieved creates positive associations and creates new connections in your brain making you feel more positive about yourself.

Of course the danger is to think that you feel you can only put big achievements on there, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. If this is the year that you decide to run a marathon, don’t just make an entry on the actual day you ran a marathon, put in an entry for how long you ran on each day you trained leading up to it.

Don’t break the chain

What’s important is that you have achievable goals that you stick to. If you make your targets too hard, you either won’t achieve them and feel you’ve failed, or you’ll put them off for a day and then another day and before you know it, you’ve given up on the task completely.

Just try to do a little bit every day

When comic hopeful Brad Isaac asked Jerry Seinfeld if he had any advice he replied that the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. How he made sure he kept to this was a done list in the form of a wall calendar.

He got a big calendar that had a whole year on it, and hung it on the wall next to his desk. Every day he completed his task of writing he’d put a big red X over that day.

“After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain,” said Seinfeld, emphasising: “Don’t break the chain.”

If you’re building a house, you can stand back at the end of each day and admire how much you’ve built that day. But the trouble with a lot of our tasks on a day-to-day basis is that there’s no physical proof of what we’ve done. That’s the great thing with a done list, as in the example of Seinfeld’s calendar: you can stand back and be proud of what you’ve achieved.

The thing with a done list is it can be about anything. What’s important is that it’s something of value to you. It could be steps towards starting your own business, it could be about how much weight you’ve lost, how much time you’ve spent reading a book.

If you’re some high flying businessman or woman, it could be about how much quality time you managed to spend with your family. Like I say, it can be about anything, but it has to be something that you value.

What I’d recommend is having a done list calendar like Jerry Seinfeld for the one task you want to push yourself to work on every day. But as well as this, I’d recommend you start a done list diary.

Don’t just get some cheap office diary, get something you’ll treasure. After all, it holds your achievements for the year, so it should be something a little bit special. Try to review your day’s achievements and make your entry in your done list diary at the same time every day.

The more you can make a habit of it, the more likely you are to keep to it. The more of a habit you make of it, the more you start to create more engrained pathways in the brain to make it harder to stop.

This is an edited extract from Neil Pavitt’s Brainhack: Tips and Tricks to Unleash Your Brain’s Full Potential, published by Capstone.

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