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Would Jesus Keep a To-Do List?

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I don’t think he would have (or did) because, knowing all things and being completely filled with the Spirit, he would not need any external reminders. It is literally impossible (both now, and when he was on earth) for Jesus to forget any obligation that he has. (And he does have obligations — that is, things he needs to get done — but they are only the arrangements he freely enters into, which are founded in the promises he has made in the Scriptures.)

But, I’ve never thought that “what would Jesus do” is necessarily the best question. It is a helpful question. But since we are not Jesus (for example, we are not omniscient), the more precise question is “what would Jesus have me do?”

And I think he would say this about to-do lists: “If you can keep all your commitments and get done what you are called to do without writing anything down, no problem. But if you have more to do than your memory is able to hold, one of the other reasons I’ve given you a mind is so that you can figure out a better way to keep track of everything than just keeping it in your head. So go, do what you need to do to remember what you need to remember in order to get done what you need to get done.”

Something like that.

The Essential Companion to Your To Do List: A To-Don't List

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Good words from Dan Pink.

Here’s a key paragraph:

“It is the discipline to discard what does not fit – to cut out what might have already cost days or even years of effort – that distinguishes the truly exceptional artist and marks the ideal piece of work, be it a symphony, a novel, a painting, a company or, most important of all, a life.”

Now, one qualification. I’ve seen people do this wrong — incredibly, horribly, terribly wrong.

The point is not about merely subtracting things. Some people get on this bandwagon and start chopping away, thinking they are being disciplined. They aren’t.

You need to get rid of the right things.

Lack of discipline is not merely doing a lot of things. It’s doing a lot of things outside of your hedgehog concept — the intersection of what you’re passionate about, what you can do with excellence, and (for organizations) what drives your resource engine.

I’ve seen people cut out a lot of great things that were inside their organization’s hedgehog concept and which there was staffing for, and the organization suffered. These people just didn’t know what they were doing. They got a hold of an important management concept, but they didn’t understand it rightly, and so misused it — to the organization’s detriment.

It is valuable to have a lot of things going on — as long as they are inside your hedgehog concept. The key to discipline is to stop doing the things that are outside of the overlap of those three circles.

Operate from Lists, Not Stacks

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From To Do Doing Done: A Creative Approach to Managing Projects and Effectively Finishing What Matters Most:

Think about what happens when you try to deal with a stack of paper. You take the first piece of paper off the stack, read it over, realize you can’t do anything about it right now, and put it back on one corner of your desk.

The next item, the same thing. The next item, you do what needs to be done and then realize that you may need the original piece of paper later, so you put it in a different stack on another corner of your desk.

You are just rearranging the stacks!

It’s impossible to prioritize a stack of paper. When you’re dealing with the stack, the most important item in that stack may be on the bottom … where you may never get to it.

The principle to overcome this is: Operate from lists, not stacks.

If you have any stacks, go through each item in them one at a time. Do what can be done in two minutes or less. When anything can’t be done in two minutes, then put it down as an action item on your next action list and then either toss the paper or, if you’ll need it when you do the action, put it in an action file and pull it out when you get to that action on your list.

If everything in the stack pertains to the same thing and it won’t fit in a file — for example, it’s a set of papers to be graded (let’s say you are a teacher) or the stack is really a big manuscript you have to read (let’s say you are an editor), then put the action which the stack represents on your next action list and put the stack on a shelf — off of your desktop. If desired, put in parentheses after the action item the location of the stack (which is really just “support material” for the action) to remind you that stack exists.

When you choose to do the action on your list, pull the stack off the shelf and do the work. When you are done with it for the day, put it back on the shelf and bring it back out the next time you work on that action.