Today would have been John Wayne’s 100th birthday, and David Hinckley at the New York Daily News penned a remembrance that embraces one of my favorite tools of effective execution: the simple to-do list.
John Wayne, who would have turned 100 on Saturday, doesn’t represent The American Man only because he was tall, rugged, straight-talking, confident and impatient. No, his real qualification, often overlooked, is that he understood that life is one long to-do list.
I’ve always felt that listmania was something of a guy thing, as my wife to this day doesn’t really understand that she needs to actually write something on my refrigerator list in order for it to finally get done. I don’t have the ability to mentally keep track of hundreds of tasks, like she does (cough…). Mr. Hinckley helps confirm my suspicion.
That’s what American Men do. They live and die figuring out ways to cross items off. It’s their quintessential trait.
Lists provide a path to execution, to getting things done. They may not inherently include vision and strategy, but work gets done. Maybe this penchant for lists is tied to the conquest of the American West.
They saw how things were and how they needed to be, and their mission was getting there. Yes, many famous American men shared some degree of this trait. That’s what "conquering the West" was about, which is why "conquering the West" and Westerns became the great American metaphor. Buy a wagon and a gun, pack in some vittles, round up the womenfolk, head West, push the natives off the land and settle down.
A to-do list, a can-do attitude, and not an apology in sight.
I live and die by my lists. I’ve tried various electronic methods from laptop to PDA to phone, but they never have enough speed, flexibility, and downright simplicity, therefore I always revert back to scribbled notes in my journal. Occasionally I will tie them to longer-term projects and strategies, but in general they lie buried within the other notes I take at meetings, on phone calls, or while experiencing the random brain fart at lunch.
I draw a small box next to them in the left margin so I can easily find them and check them off when complete. And at least once a week I’ll review the journal to find any orphaned tasks, putting a small tick mark on the top of the page when there are none remaining to speed future reviews.
Hey, it works for me. It must be due to my inner cowboy.
Dan Markovitz says
Alas, Kevin, I must disagree with you on this point: I don’t think that to-do lists are an optimal way to track one’s commitments.
Mind you, I love checking items off the list as much as you do. (It really is satisfying!) But to-do lists are commitments without a deadline, and as a result tend not to get done. Without the discipline enforced by a deadline, it’s far too easy to postpone those tasks, while something more urgent or attractive takes precedence. Then the list simply becomes an embarrassing catalog of unfulfilled commitments, with each unchecked box a baleful reproach and attack on your self-esteem. (I’m getting quite dramatic, aren’t I?)
Also, a to-do list doesn’t discriminate between tasks that take 2 minutes (changing the bathroom lightbulb) from the ones that take 2 hours (cleaning the garage, redesigning the website). So every time you look at the list, you have to assess and reassess how long each item will take to complete and whether or not you can do it now. And this continual reassessment is nothing more than rework — waste.
I suggest instead that you put each to-do item on your calendar in an estimated length of time to complete those tasks. Then, at that time you don’t need to rethink, re-analyze, or reassess — you just act. No decision, just action. What could be more lean than that?
The American psychologist William James said, “The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automation, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their proper work.”
Of course, no one knows William James, and everyone knows John Wayne. So perhaps there’s something to be said for the giant to-do list.
Kevin says
I don’t necessarily disagree, however I think we’re confronting elements of time and style. Oftentimes I do put a deadline, and even a priority code, next to scribbled to-do items. But I simply don’t have the patience and mindset to re-transcribe numerous items onto a separate calendar, let alone an electronic system. It just doesn’t work for me, and therefore it becomes even less effective. If my method really did become an “embarassing catalog of unfulfilled commitments” (great words!) I would hope I would find an alternative method! Luckily it doesn’t, and almost all get done in a timely manner.
This also brings to mind a blog post I read somewhere, perhaps on Mark’s blog, on 5S in the office. Being perfectly neat isn’t conducive to effective execution, and “piles of stuff” can actually be an effective organizing method. You need to find what works, taking into account how different brains are wired.
Dan Markovitz says
At the end of the day, it’s not how the system works, it’s how you work the system. Electronic calendar, paper to-do list, cuneiform chiseled into clay tablets, ink on the back of the hand, whatever. As long as you’re able to keep the commitments visible, you’re on the right track.