The false economy of the to-do list
Having children is productive by definition, though doing so will likely reduce your work output. (Image by filinecek)
It’s a nice feeling of accomplishment when I finish writing and formatting my blog post each day.
Some days, I’ve even written two posts. Wheeee! But it’s funny—writing more posts doesn’t really mean that I’m crossing more stuff off of my to-do list. The days and the blog posts will keep on coming, like the chocolates on Lucy and Ethel’s conveyor belt. Getting a few days ahead is always nice, but there’s still more to write. So maybe I’ve taken care of today and tomorrow, but I will need to keep it going.
A lot of my most important work is like this. A lot of my most important work, in fact, hasn’t made it onto my to-do list at all. It is in the idea stage. My “task,” if you can call it that, is to keep living my way into a future in which the idea has is defined enough to make it into my schedule or my to-do list.
If I measured my success by my ability to complete a to-do list each day, I would be a failure. It’s not that I can’t get the work done or that the work isn’t meaningful. It’s that if I used that as my primary metric, I would purposely avoid coming up with more stuff to do. I would just take care of the tasks in front of me—the email, the meetings, the bills to pay—and go home. And if I had spent the past decade doing that, I would still be working ten hours a day as a music teacher and music-school administrator, broke and desperate to escape my day job.
Most of my best stuff has been the result of things I didn’t have to do and chose to do anyway. After all, being an artist or entrepreneur means you’re bringing something into the world that you think should exist, even if no one was asking for it. It goes from hypothetical to real, and you might have added a whole bunch of stuff to your workload in the process.
Ironically, I am now objectively less busy than I was when I had only one business. I have a lot more help, and I’m also more selective about how I spend my time. I try, as best I can, to make space for not just what already exists, but what could be brought into being. Some days are swamped with obligations, but it’s more of a habit now to do creative work that no one asked for but feels essential nonetheless.
It may be satisfying to check stuff off of our to-do list. It may give us the illusion of productivity. But not everything productive is important, and not everything important is productive. The work that makes a difference doesn’t always show up on paper. A lot of my best workdays have been ones in which I ignored the existing to-dos and focused on building something new. Spending time this way may not reduce the mountain of work, but it does help to provide a new perspective on it. Sometimes, that’s what is most needed. And sometimes, we discover that the mountain of work is, itself, an illusion.
