Why To-do Lists Suck
June 15th, 2009
Ok, they don’t suck. But they don’t tell the whole story, because items on a to-do list rarely provide context.
For example, take a simple task, which can likely be found on many of your to-do lists, such as “Take out the garbage”. At face value, this seems like a very obvious request. But let’s assume someone is visiting, sees your list on the fridge and wants to lend a hand. Suddenly this seemingly simple task becomes more difficult to execute. Where is the garbage can? Is there more than one? Where does it need to be taken? What day is the garbage collected? What if the bag isn’t full? What about the raccoons?!
The difficulty with most items on to-do lists is that they’re really only meaningful to the person who wrote them. This is because they can fill in the gaps by looking at the task from their perspective, with their experience, and their past knowledge of the situation. As you’ve no doubt experienced, this causes problems when to-do lists are shared within a team, when revisiting an old list of your own, or worse of all, when a list is generated by an outside body, such as a client. Continue Reading
