Most Important Things

If you’re anything like me, you have a to-do list a mile long.  Some of the items on the list are important, many more are trivial.  So if you’re looking at that list of things to do first thing in the morning, what are you most likely to do?  Again, if you’re anything like me, you won’t choose what’s most important – you choose whatever is easiest.

We like the little wins.  The low hanging fruit – it’s like candy for the wants-to-be-productive part of your brain.  There is definitely something satisfying about checking things off from your to-do list.  It doesn’t even matter what it is.  You could put things on your list that you were going to do anyway – brush teeth, take shower, make breakfast – and when you check them off, it still feels good.  So it’s no wonder that you when you’re looking at your list of things to do that you choose the easiest one.  You get all of the satisfaction of accomplishment without any of the…you know… actual hard work.

I’ve long used a program called “Things” (not being paid by them, just an honest plug- Apple only) to organize my different projects and provide me with a to-do list each day from all my different areas of responsibility.  I used to stuff it with 4 or 5 things per day from my normal routine, stuff I would do anyway.  Things like “balance my checkbook,” “empty my home inbox,” “fold laundry.”  I even had items on my to-do list to remind me to make another to-do list when I got to work.  In other words, I set up a bunch of reminders to do simple maintenance tasks and stuff I would be doing anyway, not actual work on stuff that was actually important or pushed my life forward.  At the end of the day, if I checked off 12 of 15 things, I’d feel good about myself.  As long as I got most of the things checked off, I’d just carry over the last few things to the next day.  Except I noticed that the same few things were getting carried over from day to day.  The hard things.  The Most Important Things.  

I’m not arguing that you get rid of your to-do list – I couldn’t function without mine.  What you (and I) should do is organize our to-do list in terms of what is most important, not what’s easiest, and then force ourselves to go in order.  I just started deleting the smaller things from my lists altogether if I felt I could get them done without reminders and began leaving only important things on the list.  It’s a work in progress, but I’ve realized that finishing one “Most Important Thing” means a whole lot more than a dozen checkmarks next to little things on the to-do list.