Chapter 13

How to Tackle Your To-Do List

by Peter Bregman

For many of us, our to-do list has become more of a guilt list: an inventory of everything we want to do and really should do, but never get to. And the longer the list, the less likely we’ll get to everything on it, and the more stressed we become.

So how do we turn intention into action?

It’s the power of when and where.

Decide when and where you’ll do something, and the likelihood that you’ll follow through increases dramatically. The reason we’re always left with unfinished items on our to-do lists is because they’re the wrong tool to drive our accomplishments. A list is useful as a collection tool—to ensure we know the pool of things that we need to do.

A calendar, on the other hand, is the perfect tool to guide our daily accomplishments. A calendar is finite; there are only so many available hours. This becomes clear the instant we try to cram an unrealistic number of things into any one day.

Once you have your to-do list, open your calendar and decide when and where you’re going to do each item. Schedule each task for a specific time, placing the most challenging and important items at the beginning of the day—before even checking your e-mail.

Since your entire to-do list won’t fit into your calendar, prioritize. What do you really need to do today? What important items have you been ignoring? Where can you slot them into your schedule? Once you schedule an item, cross it off your list.

Transferring items from your to-do list to your calendar will help you make strategic choices about where you spend your time, but it will also leave you with a long list of items that didn’t fit into your calendar for the day.

What do you do with those things?

I created a three-day rule to prevent items from haunting me indefinitely.

Here’s what I do: After I’ve filled my calendar for the day, I review what’s left on the list. I leave new items, those I just added that day or in the previous two days, on the list to see if they make it onto my calendar the following day.

But for everything else—anything that’s been on my calendar for three days—I do one of four things:

1. Do it immediately. I’m often amazed at how many things have been sitting on my list for days that, when I finally decide to do them, take no time at all. Often they turn out to be 30-second voice mails or two-minute e-mails.
2. Schedule it. For those things that I don’t do immediately, I look for a time to slot them into my calendar, even if it’s six months away. If it’s important enough for me to have on my list, then I need to commit to doing it at a specific time and day. I can always change my plan when I review my calendar for that day, but if I want to do it, I need to schedule it.
3. Let it go. That’s a nice way of saying delete the to-do. If I’m not willing to do something immediately or schedule it for a specific time and day, I won’t ever do it. I face the reality that while I might like these things to be priorities, they currently aren’t.
4. Add it to a someday/maybe list. Sometimes it’s too hard to delete something. I don’t want to admit that I’m not going to do it. And I want to remember that I think, someday, maybe it would be a good idea. So I put those items in a someday/maybe list, which I learned about from David Allen, author of Getting Things Done. It’s where I put things to slowly die. I rarely, if ever, do things on this list. I look at it occasionally, get rid of the items that are no longer relevant, and then put the list away for another month. I probably could delete everything on this list, but I sleep a little better knowing I can put things on it when I’m not courageous or guilt-free enough to do away with them right off the bat. And who knows? Perhaps someday, maybe, I’ll do something on that list.

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Peter Bregman is a strategic adviser to CEOs and their leadership teams. His latest book is 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done.

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Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on March 2, 2011.