Hugh’s Blog

What are you hanging on to?

I love my time management tools. OK ‘love’ is a bit strong, but I do love the way they organize, detail, share and keep track of what I need to work on. My new iphone system includes a cool tool called www.toodledo.com that syncs with the http://www.appigo.com/todo/ app so now anything that I put in Outlook Tasks goes to my phone and vis a versa. Presto! I can be a list monkey now from my office or anywhere.

And we as a society have become a little list-obsessed, don’t you think? We have lists for work, for weekends, for life, for our home renovations, I even know someone that keeps a list of movies they want to see. And now Hollywood has popularized the ‘bucket list’ as a must have.

The last 20 years (think: Franklin Planner, Priority Management, Stephen Covey, David Allen and co.) has seen an explosion of demand for systems to better organized and plan our life ambitions. No question, these are great and useful. But here’s the cautionary note from one list-lover to another. Just because it landed on your list, doesn’t mean it needs to stay there.

While defining the need and documenting it in your favourite planner system is a critical first step a more important one is to rethink it later. In other words, just because your list got longer this week does not mean that all tasks are necessarily going to get done, nor should they.

For years I have fallen in love with my ‘must do’ list. The longer it got the more important I felt. “Just look at how long my list is!” The reality is that nobody (including me, as I am learning) cares whether my list gets accomplished. They (and me) only care about results.

So if you find ‘redesign client enquiry form’, or ‘research more Eastern conferences’ on your list two weeks in a row and not an iota of energy has gone to it (other than resenting its presence of course) consider the Big D’s: Do it, Delete it, Defer it or Delegate it. But don’t just leave it there staring at you in blame-ridden font.

Go for it today and have a look at your lists: What are you hanging on to?