How Having A To-Do List Can Potentially Sabotage Your Productivity (And Ways To Do It Right)

A to-do list is a written set of tasks you intend to complete, but it improves productivity only when it helps you choose the work that matters most. The best to-do list tips focus on priority, realistic capacity, and protecting time for one meaningful goal.

The following is a guest post by Jay Liew, who runs Great Big Minds. He shares practical ideas intended to help readers live with greater purpose and pursue what matters to them.

We live in a hyper-connected digital world that glorifies multitasking. it’s the only way to get everything done when there are so many things to tick off our seemingly endless to-do-list. Keeping ourselves busy means we are being productive, right? In many cases, the answer is a big, fat no. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but keeping a to-do-list and focusing your sole effort in knocking as many items off that list can actually hold yourself back from achieving your bigger, more meaningful goals. How so? Let’s dig a little bit deeper, and provide you with some to-do list tips that will get you on the right track.

To-do list: The good

Many people swear by keeping a to-do-list. If you’re one of those people, I’m not saying that you should chuck your to-do-list out of the window right now. If you have multiple things to keep track of, a to-do-list most definitely helps in giving you clarity and an overview of all tasks that need to be tackled in any given day or week. This way, you’ll avoid wasting time on mental paralysis and can jump right onto the next task after successfully ticking off one task. Without a to-do-list, you may risk running around like a headless chicken.

To-do list: The bad

The problem begins when a to-do list becomes a brain dump. Every single thing that needs to be done is transferred from our brain onto the list. The truth is, not all items on the list are created equal, so assigning them the same priority can jeopardize progress toward your ultimate goal. Completing as many things as possible may make us feel productive even when the most important work has not moved. A long list rewards activity, but a useful list makes priority visible. That is why the best productivity system separates meaningful progress from motion. We are also prone to the planning fallacy: underestimating how long future work will take, even when experience tells us otherwise. Day by day, unticked items can snowball into a pile that drains motivation. A shorter list, built around realistic capacity, makes it easier to see what deserves attention now and what can wait.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

It seems like, with a to-do-list, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. So should we do away with it entirely?

To-do list tips: The importance of One Thing

This is where the One Thing comes into play. Gary Keller and Jay Papasan develop the concept in The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results. Their framework offers a practical response to the vital few and trivial many that compete for our attention. Keller suggests that by figuring your One Thing, you’ll get better clarity on which tasks you should tackle each day, to help you achieve your ultimate goal. He invites us to think of every task as a domino block. As each domino falls down, each time knocking down the block 1.5 times the size of the previous block, the momentum builds and over time, you can expect to achieve a monumental impact. If you start off with a block with 5 mm in height and 1 mm in thickness, the 29th block knocked down could be as tall as the Empire State Building. How’s that for a perspective? As a start, Keller suggests us to ask this one defining question: What’s the ONE Thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary? For instance, you may gravitate towards building products that help others, or motivating and inspiring people to follow their dreams, or creating as many jobs as possible in your local community through a successful business model. Whatever it is, it should be something that sparks your inner fire and drive. Once you figure out your One Thing, it’s easy to throw yourself into a meaningful and distraction-free deep work every single day, that will push your capabilities to their limits.

Integrating the One Thing into your daily schedule

Let’s say you’ve discovered your One Thing. How do you structure your daily schedule in such a way that aligns with the One Thing that you want to accomplish? There are two ways to organize the work that you can choose to go about it, both of which will help you accomplish your short- and long-term goals.

The One Thing as a process in itself

If you are already on your path to achieving your wildest, biggest dream, you’ll probably realize by now that ‘overnight success’ is a myth and that putting in hard work is the most basic requirement, not an advantage. Each day you are faced with tasks that demand your time and attention. e-mails to write, calls to make, campaigns to execute, and the list is endless. While these tasks may seem important, some tasks provide a greater overall output compared to the others. It’s called the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 principle, which states that 20% of your effort provides 80% of the result. So how do you go about it? According to Keller, out with the good ol’ to-do-list, and in with its new, better cousin. the Success List: 1. At the beginning of each week, list down the key activities that will help you form life-long good habits that align with your One Thing; this could be, working out for 30 minutes every day or spending 1 hour to learn something new about your industry. Mark this as your Habit List. 2. Now, list down all the tasks that you need to do in order to achieve your One Thing. 3. Next, take that list and with the Pareto Principle in mind, categorize each task into two categories. whether it creates a low impact (20%) or a high impact (80%) result. If you are still left with a long list, have a go at it one more time and narrow down your high impact tasks into extreme impact-producing tasks. You can repeat the process a few times until you are left with just a few items on your list. 4. This is your ‘Success List’. Your Success List should be your handbook that will guide you to your One Thing. By keeping the Success List, you need to be brave enough to push other unequally important tasks to the bottom of the list, or better still, to just drop them off the list completely. 5. Throughout the week, spend your first time block (uninterrupted hours which could range between 2 to 4 hours) of your working day, when your energy and motivation are at its highest, on tackling the items on this list. This means you are devoting the best of you on these important tasks rather than menial tasks such as updating your social media account or replying to any unimportant e-mails. 6. Remember your Habit List? It is part of your Success List so make sure you pencil in the time to complete the list every single day as these habits are the ones that will take your game to the next level. 7. By keeping a Success List, you are more likely to focus on tasks that bring is the most meaningful result, rather than getting caught up in the temporary high of ticking off the items on your to-do list

The process that facilitates your One Thing

Some of you may be at a stage in life where your One Thing is a side hustle while you work on projects that pay the bills. That is perfectly okay, and it does not mean your One Thing has to fall by the wayside. Here is an easy-to-follow process for consolidating daily tasks while still giving your One Thing the emphasis it deserves:

1. Choose up to three meaningful outcomes for the day. Each one should move you closer to your One Thing. That might mean writing 500 words for your book, perfecting an elevator pitch, or learning something useful about your industry. Repeatable actions build mastery when you practice them consistently.
2. Protect a realistic focus block for the highest-impact outcome. Schedule it when your energy is usually strongest, whether that is early morning or later in the day. Put the phone away, silence notifications, and work on one outcome at a time.
3. Rank the rest of your work by importance and urgency. Start with the task that is high on both measures, then reassess the order at the beginning of each day. A useful list reflects current priorities instead of preserving yesterday’s assumptions.
4. Single-task when the work is demanding. Switching attention creates a cost in time and accuracy. The American Psychological Association’s research summary on multitasking explains why even brief task switching can undermine productive work.
5. Cluster similar routine tasks. Block time for email, returning calls, or conducting interviews instead of scattering them across the day. Grouping this work reduces repeated context switching and protects your best attention for your One Thing.

To-do list tips: Final note

A to-do-list in itself is not inherently bad, as long as we understand how it works on our brain. The most important takeaway from the One Thing concept is to design your workday around a to-do-list that does not make you lose sight of your one major goal, while ensuring that the process you choose does not interfere with your day-to-day responsibilities. The beauty of the One Thing concept is that it can also be applied to all areas of your life, not just your career or business. To create a meaningful and fulfilled life, you can start asking the same important question to the other areas of your life, such as health and relationship: What is the One Thing that I could do to greatly improve this area in my life? If you’ve been struggling to lead a healthy lifestyle as work has been getting in the way, the One Thing you could do to dramatically improve your well-being may be by tracking a few healthy habits (working out 20 minutes daily, getting enough sleep, making better food choices) with the help of an app. In terms of relationship, the One Thing you could do to be a better partner may be by being a better listener. The things you could do to achieve this include, allocate time every two weeks for date nights and switching off any notifications for work e-mail and social media accounts during this time. Ultimately, your goal is to chart your life meaningfully and intentionally, rather than racing through your to-do-list down into the ground. Therefore, it’s important to get your focus right, which will then allow you to lead your life with a clear plan and vision on how to get to your end goal. Because ultimately, it’s that one major goal that you want to define your life with, not how quickly you can clear off your inbox, or other menial tasks on your to-do-list.

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