Is your list too long?
Most companies have one. A very long list of everything they intend to do. I call it the “list of things we’re not doing,” I refuse to keep one, and I consider it one of the most subtly harmful and maddeningly ubiquitous patterns in business.
Symptom: low morale
Do you have a checklist or backlog that’s longer than 5–10 items? How do you feel about it? That sinking feeling matters: it leads to procrastination, avoidance, listlessness (haha), and distraction. Whole teams can stall just based on having a depressingly long list of things to do.
Symptom: unrealistic expectations
When you add an item to the end of a long list, you think that means it’ll get done. Active lists don’t work that way. Important tasks go at the top, less important ones at the bottom. The list grows in both directions at once. Anything below the top 5–10 items is sinking slowly into oblivion. It’s never getting done.
Symptom: bad prioritization
A list is only as good as its order: you work from the top and thus you order the list according to importance. Yet as a list grows, it becomes hard to recognize and prioritize an important task lost in a mountain of minutiae. Just looking through a list of 50 items taxes your short-term memory, and when sorting becomes too hard you’ll default to guessing.
Cause: lack of empowerment
Why do we keep deluding ourselves, and allowing our lists to grow? The answer is often that we don’t feel comfortable rejecting or deleting work from our lists. Sometimes because we overestimate our personal velocity, or because we’re afraid to say “no” to our bosses, or because it’s easier than making a hard judgement call, or because we’re lazy. But this list is your life!
Cause: fear
We’re afraid we’ll make the wrong choice, but the alternative is making no choice at all. We’re afraid to upset our boss, who will be just as upset if we don’t meet our commitments. We’re afraid of trying to solve hard problems, but the only way forward is to try.
Cure: take control
There are three power-moves of managing backlogs and task lists, and I practice them in the following order:
- do more
The most obvious (though often overlooked) solution is to do more work. Fix the bugs. Send the emails. Go to the grocery store. Sleep less. Instagram less.
2. stop the bleeding
If your list keeps growing, you’ll never catch up. Ask yourself, or whomever adds to your list, to justify adding more: is it really important? can someone else do it? is it realistic?
Say “no.” It’s the most important thing you’ll ever learn.
3. hack
Now that you are stricter (I hope) with what you allow to be added, go back and retroactively delete anything that doesn’t meet your new bar. Look for:
- tasks you’ll obviously never finish (too hard, too crazy)
- tasks you’ve forgotten the original meaning of or are no longer relevant
- tasks that have been sitting so long that they must not matter much
4. purge
If you still can’t get the list under control, delete the whole list. The important stuff will come back.
Enlightenment: short lists are power
Short lists almost miraculously result in better decisions. You start asking yourself, if I can only keep 5 things, what do I really want to accomplish? Your boss, on realizing she’s delusional, starts thinking about hiring you more help.
Short lists are truth, and truth is power.
