The Missing Feature of To-Do Lists

As much as I love to-do lists, they don’t love me back. I’ll put things on my list and never act.

We use these lists the wrong way. We think capturing our intentions means acting on them.

Sadly, only 20 to 30% of behavior is based on intentions. A better predictor is past behavior. This is why habits are powerful. Repeated, automatic behaviors win out versus vague alternatives.

Not everything needs to be a habit. Habits take cultivation and time to build into effortless behaviors.

So how do we act on intentions without habits? We need to supercharge them.

Intentions alone are actors on a movie set; without a script and director, they have no idea where to go or when to say their line.

Our intentions need scripts too. Simply put, you need to get down to the “nitty-gritty” of what/when/how of the behavior.

If we don’t add those situational cues, we end up with missed opportunities to act on good intentions. Our brain’s default is to go on autopilot. You will repeat previous behaviors.

Adding situational cues to our intentions can be the difference.

Let’s go back to my to-do list. I still use one for capturing ideas or tasks. Brain dumps into a trusted external system is a must. Since our brains are for having ideas, not holding them.

But I don’t fall into the trap, the list will also let me know when to act. To-do lists are vague intentions even when you set due dates. If due dates are supposed to be when the task gets completed, when do you actually do them?

For that question, I time-block. It’s a technique of assigning tasks into time chunks.

Time-blocking works because it activates an event (time) when the task gets a chance to be worked on.

When X occurs, I will do Y.

So for example, when it’s 8 AM on Monday, I will write for a 1-hour block until 9 AM.

Let’s can take it further and add where and what to the mix.

At 8 AM on Monday, I will write issue 10 of my newsletter for a 1-hour block until 9 AM at my desktop computer.

Adding a situational cue increases our heightened awareness to perform the behavior.

If this looks familiar, I mentioned it in a previous issue about piggybacking off an established habit. This is another form of the same technique called implementation intention.

When we don’t have the habit formed, this technique can mimic the same effects of making our behavior more automatic and less conscious. A pre-planned strategy to act frees up cognitive energy to be in the moment of task completion.