Leonardo Da Vinci’s To Do List Will Make You Feel Like A Loser

Tucked away somewhere, maybe in a pocket notepad, scribbled on some paper in your wallet or buried in an obscure app you rarely use, is a to-list.

Now it might be your own personal 10 step plan for world domination, but if you’re like the rest of us it probably contains all those minor tasks that are so nondescript they’re ridiculously easy to forget.

You know the ones, things to pick up at the local supermarket, household tasks that need doing, people to email or call back and all the other bits and pieces that then make you wonder where the day went. But no matter how long your list might be or how ambitious it is — it pales into comparison to that of Leonardo Da Vinci’s.

Yep, even one of the greatest minds of a generation needed to keep track of things every now and then. In one of his notebooks dating back to around the 1490s, he wrote the following sentence “It is useful to constantly observe, note and consider.”

Now who are we to argue with that sage piece of advice?

So what did type of tasks did Da Vinci’s to-do lists contain? For starters his unrelenting thirst for knowledge and intellectual restlessness lead him to create a variety of tasks that are both board and inspiring in scope.