8 Benefits of Having a To-do List

Calin Pupaza
Sep 7, 2018 · 4 min read

Do you ever happen to be in the middle of an activity and something else that you have to do pops into your mind?

Do you happen to forget to follow up on emails, pay bills, or complete necessary tasks?

Do you have many projects in your personal and professional life to keep track of, and it’s overwhelming to keep track of all the things you need to complete?

Well, you need a to-do list!

Having a clear to-do list provides many benefits:

  • Course of action

You can easily write down a course of action for more complex or unclear tasks. Since it’s a list, its format helps you define steps and divide the work in smaller pieces.

  • Focus on results

It’s not a given, but the way you phrase your to-do list helps you define a result, and the chances of your work being focused are greater.
Think “Write tests for classes X, Y and Z” rather than “Work on tests”.
Or “Buy watch for birthday present” instead of “Shop for watch”.

  • Minimizes interruptions

While you are in a deeply focused state, its common that random thoughts surface, and most times they are things we need to do, or have forgotten to do.
Writing a list will rid you of the anxiety that forgotten tasks can cause because it ensures you will not forget them.
If you are fast, you could jot down the thought and get back to your initial work without losing your focus.

  • Clears up your mind

The constant cloud of random things to do turns into a background noise of thought, that absorbs your attention and consumes energy. Putting these items on your list will free up that attention and you’ll be more productive. See it as freeing up your brain-width (pun on band-width).

  • Eliminates anxiety

The certainty the list gives you after a while is noticeable. You are not forgetting things, you have a plan for the immediate future, you even know what to get at the grocery store. These might seem trivial concerns, but they can amount to significant overall stress, which is unnecessary.

  • Creates clarity

Having a place where you can elaborate on thoughts, plans, things to get, or books to read — and the habit of using a to-do list to organize all this- will create over time a more structured mental model that you will use automatically, even when it’s not about writing on the to-do list. Your thoughts themselves will eventually be more compartmentalized, categorized, and more sequential (with longer and longer thought-sequences). Basically, you’ll plan further ahead.

  • Decreases reliance on memory

Our memory is not great, especially when we have to manage multiple projects, workloads and all the distractions in daily life. Memorizing also consumes significant brain power, which can be put to better use for executive and creative functions.

It is better to save our limited memory capabilities for long-term things like learning and studying.

  • Sense of accomplishment

Last, but definitely not least, checking things off the to-do list is very rewarding.
For a greater sense of satisfaction, keep your checked off to-do lists when you need to be motivated. Looking at all of your accomplishments will help when you are feeling overwhelmed by dozens of tasks.

Seeing what you have performed many times in the past is very empowering and gives you energy and hope.

Lists don’t have to be only for TO-DOs. I personally have many types of lists:

of course groceries, but also house projects, books to read, documentaries and movies to watch, project ideas, blog post subjects, travel destinations, learning plans for work and for my business, financial plans, even a list of things to do when I’m bored (I’ll talk about that in a different post :) ).

There’s plenty of apps that are designed as to-do lists — a really good list with details and screenshots is here: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-to-do-list-apps-tools.

My main criteria is accessibility, so my favorite is Google Keep for my personal life and projects. Besides having a mobile app and a web app, it’s also integrated with Google Now, so I can just add notes via voice commands to my phone or when I’m driving: “OK Google, note to self get the audiobook Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ~ let’s hear you say *that* to your phone :)

For work I use Microsoft OneNote, and I have a workbook with weekly to-dos and plans, structured as a table for every week and every weekday.

For my reading list I use Pocket; it’s easy to save links for offline reading later, and its recommendations are useful and often pertinent.

Action Item

If this resonates, do the following:

  • Pick a to-do app from the list
  • Bookmark it in your browser and/or install it on your phone
  • Check out and assistants integrations like Alexa, Siri, Google, or Cortana — you’ll thank me later
  • Start adding things to your list
  • Feel the enjoyment of checking them off :)

Good luck!


Calin is a software engineer, and a life coach. Both sides of his work complement each other to bring actionable coaching and valuable insights to tech professionals.

Contact Calin at https://www.calinpupaza.com/#ContactMe

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