Why you should not make a ToDo list

Businesspersons have to administrate many tasks at the same time. Some works are very tiny while others are complicated. Forgetting the deadline of each one would make you regret later.

To address them, you may used to be ordered to make a ToDo list by your boss. ToDo list is obviously the list of what you should do. You may be disappointed to see the words on the list each of which bothers you.

So, I declare that ToDo list is no more meaningful. I recommend you to drop it immediately. Why?

There are many lists you can make other than ToDo list. You have experienced to make a list of goods you have to purchase. You may be encouraged to make the dream list in some seminars on self-development.

In the session of cognitive therapy, we often recommend the client to make a list of worrying. Listing up what you worry about now lets you relieve from anxiety, as a simple problem-solving.

Dale Carnegie also wrote about it in his book "How to stop worrying and start living." According to him, getting the fact is necessary to analyze the worries in order to deal with them appropriately.

How To Stop Worrying And Start Living By Dale Carnegie

But, actually, creating a worrying list makes you happy, without analyzing in detail. I suggest depressed patients to write them down and burn it immediately. It is enough, because of some reasons.

1. Writing the worries itself is an analysis.
When you make the worrying list, you have to vocalize your thought. It helps you to clarify what is bothering you.

2. You can know how many worries you are suffering.
You can count the items to know how many worries is there around you. Ten, twenty, or a hundred? It is important to recognize that the worries are countable. A person in the maelstrom of anxiety may feel being attacked by infinite and eternal concerns. Listing crashes such a delusion.

3. Some worries are incurable.
You may worry about what nobody can solve. For example, anxiety about the war, fear of getting old, diseases in the future, and so forth. Worrying about such things is a waste of time, especially when you are exhausted. Burn them, and forget them, do not analyze them.

For these reasons, the worrying list is effective to relieve you even if it does not serve as a solution.

In contrast, ToDo list has no power of relieving. Most people list up the tasks that have already been clarified. You may know the tasks are not infinite, of course. And it is the most important that you unintentionally include the tasks that you will never accomplish.

You can drop the worrying list whenever you want to do so. On the contrary, ToDo list on your desk continues to bother you until all the items are eliminated. And you may know the day when the list becomes vacant will never come.

You should not make ToDo list. Instead, I recommend you to obey a rule in the situation you have to deal with multiple tasks.

“Begin on the task whose deadline is the slowest.”

My past entry: The best way to multi tasks