One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done. Marie Curie

We all use to do lists. For food shopping, reminders for our children, holiday packing and of course at work. From the back of an envelope to a computer screen, this most simple of reminders seems to be the solution to our domestic disorganisation. And at work too, we think our to do lists will help us keep on track and be more effective. But do they really?

In a coaching session last week, I heard why for many of us in leadership roles, to do lists may not always be the most helpful tool. That our desperate desire to prevent ourselves forgetting, might in fact actually mean we are less available to those around us. This conversation helped me to rethink how I approach my own workload and to be more ‘in the room’ with people.

What was going wrong?
Here is what my colleague said (he was keen that I share this learning): “I was exhausted and distracted in meetings, worrying about what was coming up next in my diary. I was unproductive, failing to complete my list of tasks, which just grew day-by-day. The moment I realised things had to change was when I arrived at a meeting, and, as I leafed through my diary, I realised that not only had I not had time to act on the previous meeting, I hadn’t even looked back at any of my notes. I could feel my personal interactions deteriorating. I was just not enjoying work or the situation in front of me.“

I absolutely know that feeling. When you are so desperately intent on getting the information down in a meeting or conversation, that physically you have your head down in a notebook or laptop and it feels like only half of your brain is involved in the discussion, because you’re thinking about turning these notes into useful actions, or you’re worried about which actions you’ll end up with, or how many jobs are already on the ‘to do list’ for today. We are often so preoccupied, that other people feel we are not there in the room with them. Our body language is focused on future tasks and not the people present in front of us. It’s as though we are clerking. A cog in the process maybe, but certainly not leading.

In Meditation for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman describes this kind of feeling as, “the sense of not having life nailed down yet, needing to exert oneself harder and harder, if only to avoid slipping further back.”

He believes it is part of a wider sense that we are not managing: “The younger people I encounter seem utterly daunted by the task of getting life into working order, whilst many older ones are dismayed that, by forty or fifty, they haven’t managed to do it, and are starting to wonder if they ever will.”

Why to-do lists?
To do lists have been used for centuries. Leonardo da Vinci’s to do list included to try to calculate the measurement of Milan and its suburbs, and to describe the jaw of a crocodile; while Thomas Edison’s planned to create artificial ivory, make butter directly from milk and design a long-distance standard telephone transmitter. While not all of these inventors’ ideas came to fruition, both clearly saw value in getting them all out of their heads and onto paper. At their best, to do lists are the most basic of timesavers, a way of collating and unburdening stuff from your mind, freeing up working memory. And there is evidence that getting uncompleted tasks down on paper reduces anxiety, so presumably they must help?

But there are three problems with to do lists:
1/ Tasks just keep accumulating. The list compounds, and while it feels good to have got them all down, pretty soon you’re swamped. The truth is that most of us are adding tasks quicker than we can possibly complete them. Consider the job list you currently have in the back of your diary, or lying around the house, or magnetised to your fridge. Apparently, we can handle about seven options before our brain becomes overwhelmed. When I look at the 24 items currently on my list, and realise some of the bigger jobs have been stagnating there since Labour were elected, is it any surprise I feel paralysed when I’m thinking about what’s next?

2/ The desire to tick things off means we don’t prioritise well. Faced with a growing list of to do’s, we search for the easiest thing to tick off, the lowest hanging fruit, the one that will use up the least time. And because some tasks take only two minutes while others take thirty-two, is it any surprise we plump for the shorter one, even when it may not be what needs doing next. As the late economics guru, Peter Drucker said, ‘there is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which shouldn’t be done at all.’

3/ The truth is that most items on my own list aren’t really ‘to-dos’ at all, but a fragment of bigger projects that require a different kind of structure to help me get them done. One word on a long list doesn’t provide sufficient context to help me decide what to work on. In order for me to be able to assess them properly, I need a clearer breakdown to see what each task involves.

So what am I doing now?
Basically, I’m trying to stop worrying and fixating over my to do lists, and replacing this habit with a ‘done list’. This means that I focus much more on the tasks I completed that day. At the end of the day I focus on the useful tasks completed, the constructive meetings I’ve been part of, the effective jobs done. I note these down, and then spend a few minutes at the end of each day thinking about what went well or not, and reflecting what I’d learnt. One problem with my old to do lists was that I’d cross them off, to give me a sense of completion, so they’d disappear. And then I write the new tasks for tomorrow or next week, so all I see is more work rather than what I’ve successfully completed.

This meant that each morning I’d start already behind, with a kind of ‘productivity debt’. Doing this creates two problems: firstly we cannot see how far we’ve come, for example, you may have completed twenty actions this week but because Friday has seven new tasks compared with Monday’s five, it feels like you’ve made no progress through the week; secondly, you’ve wiped clean the slate or the whiteboard, or torn the page from your diary too soon to see your progress, to seize hold of your learning. I learn much more through this process of asking the evening questions than by chalking the jobs off and moving on.

Focusing on what I’ve done today, and reflecting on it, rather than the future to do list, also helps me to feel less exhausted and defers some of my self-criticism (I’m also no longer carrying around four pages of jobs in my head which is as toxic as the disruption of the phone).

By doing this, now when I’m with people, I’m more likely to get my head up and out of the laptop, scan the room thinking about others, listen more carefully, and ask better questions. Sometimes I even smile at my colleagues. Now that I am really present, I try to more actively lead the discussion and move things forward, guiding people, suggesting who has the particular skills to apply to the collective challenge. I find this helps me bring the discussion together in a ‘what is it we’re trying to achieve here?’ kind of way.

Dwight Eisenhower said, “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Planning is what we do when we are with people, but most plans are written alone. It’s the people in the room who are the answer, not the list.

And what about the to do list?
I haven’t stopped completely. I still need to download my thinking, maybe in the car for instance on voice notes on my phone. But the principle is the same: it’s about getting my head up and being in the room. It helps me to feel as good about what I’m not doing (stressing about all the things I’m neglecting on my to do list), as what I am doing (actually focusing on the people in front of me).

Do some things fall off the edge? Yes of course, but when I forget to do something that’s on my list, the world doesn’t end. You can only do one thing at a time, and there will always be more to do than you can do. I allow myself to ignore the guilt and anxiety about what I’m not doing. And because I’m more in the room with people, they are much more forgiving when I miss something. It’s less about compliance (I mustn’t miss anything), and much more about connection, (I see more).

Problem-solving begins with people
Coaching is, of course, always a two-way learning process. I like what I’ve learned from this conversation. My colleague who introduced me to the idea of ‘done lists’ said, “my workload is more manageable, and I never thought this could have been achieved by removing one my most fundamental toolkits: tick lists. I might have been stuck in this forever.” In my own work I think this shift is helping me to be a more agile thinker, rather than sticking to my preset plan. I’m now more flexible in the way that I approach problem-solving, and I have less of a fixed idea of what improvement should look like. My approach is less short term, because I’m not just fixing things myself. By focusing more on how other people can be part of the solution, this naturally generates a longer-term approach where their development is part of the answer. It’s a win – win.

For instance, each time I’m now faced with a tricky situation or challenge, I tried to step back and prevent myself fixing the thing. I’m now trying to focus on people first, and ask myself who’ll be best at this, who’s most effective for that? And when this works well, this approach chimes with where I would think this person might develop in the future. It also means of course that the solution becomes our solution, not just my solution.

This also neutralises a little of my workplace anxiety, helping me to change my mind set from one where I’m worried about where the next problem is coming from, to one where I’m looking forward to the next opportunity to harness the skills of my eminently capable team. ‘Turn the problem into an opportunity’, is of course the most overused cliché, but this is exactly what those words look like in this context.

Messy leadership
So, I’ve begun to change my mindset from one where I have a fixed idea of what needs to happen, for example whether the SDP is fixed from September, or where the appraisal targets say this is what we must focus on for the whole year. Now I’m much more comfortable with adjusting our plan to the situation in front of us. This may not be great for sitting down with governors or trustees who may want the certainty of a definitive document, or to see how well RAG-rated your plan is. But it may work better for real people, through real events, across a real year.

And because this more flexible approach is more focused on people, it encourages them to come back to me with more suggestions and with better questions.

We often make an artificial division between two processes: (a) organisational development and (b) people development, whereas in fact these should be one and the same. By being more flexible in your approach, by building strategy around people and not just actions on a tick list, then the organisation becomes less rigid and people become more confident. As the African proverb tells us, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

It feels messier to focus on people, not plans, but I’m finding this personalised approach more effective. Of course, we need to be both organised and agile, but my learning from this conversation is to do more of the latter. Lifting my head up and focusing on my team instead of the to do lists is helping me to think more about each person and their development, and it’s making me happier too.