To-do lists considered as evil magic

Towards indicative-verb activity lists

People often talk about the power of ideas. Usually, they’re talking about things like the development of the computer, the way that our lives are shaped by constructed socal systems such as gender or the capitalist economy, or the fact that a reading a well-placed Mary Oliver verse graffiti’d onto a ladies’ bathroom stall in the Harper Building at the University of Chicago can cause you to dissolve into a puddle of confused gratitude.¹

But ideas also shape our lives in more quotidian ways. Consider the to-do list. I often write them, and I often feel burdened by them, particularly as time goes on and they accumulate more and more items. I recently read some of Caitlin Moran’s More Than A Woman, and this passage caused me to go Oh No in mortified recognition:

…when I look at the screen I see the last thing I looked at last night: The List. I instantly de-relax. The List* is the one constant in my life. In many ways, The List is my life. The List is the eternal note I keep open on my phone, the running totaliser of all the jobs that need doing, but that I haven’t got round to yet…

The List is the shadow self of Being Thankful [i.e. gratitude practice]. Being Thankful is all about rejoicing in what you are. The List is, essentially, a running apology for what you are not yet.

All middle-aged women have a list like this:

• Blind for bedroom

• Kids passports

• Cut cat’s claws

• Clean gutters

• Tax return

• START RUNNING

…[lists 25 more items]…

That’s only the first page. There are five. These are the things that stand between me and a perfect life.²

This phenomenon is widely relatable, but it’s also, if you think about it, extremely bizarre. Because: what is a to-do list, ontologically, metaphysically, spiritually? It’s a list of actions. How could a list of actions burden me? This is not a thing with physical mass. I’m not carrying a rock. What does that metaphor of ‘burden’ mean?

Well, it means that I feel worse while the to-do list exists, or perhaps only when I remember its existence. But the existence of what?

Aside from the paper and/or silicon they live on, to-do list items don’t exist in the physical world. ‘To do’ is an infinitive verb, but the meaning we ascribe to ‘to-do lists’ is more like the Latin gerundive, a verb form which means ‘to be x-ed’ or ‘should be x-ed’. The word ‘agenda’ comes from a Latin gerundive form which literally means ‘stuff to be done’. This is in contrast to indicative verbs, which describe true facts about the past, present, or future (‘I did’ ‘I am doing’ ‘I will do’).

‘To do’ is sort of related to future doings, but the existence of an item on my to-do list is really no guarantee that it will be done at any future point. It’s not even a strong prediction that it will be done. Rather, to-do list items (as I relate to them) are possible actions that I could take or might take, seasoned with obligation.

Consider the craziness of feeling bad because of imaginary, non-existent actions. Of feeling weighed down by ‘the very concept of me washing the dishes at some point’. Why do I feel burdened by that? And yet. The imagination is magical and also possibly evil, QED.

But to be serious: why might to-do lists make me sad?

To-do list items as commitments

I suspect to-do lists burden me because part of me sees to-dos as a commitment to do something, but the parts that ‘assign’ the to-dos either don’t relate to them as commitments, or are just not mindful of the experience of the parts that have to actually deal with the to-dos. In IFS, plan-making and aspirational parts are known as ‘manager parts’, and this metaphor is apt here: my to-do list makers are like a bad manager who assigns their reports too many tasks without regard for their time or for how burdened they already might be.

If in a single week I’d committed to doing 50 solid hours of work, going to the gym every day, attending and practicing for 3 choir rehearsals, attending 4 parties, and spending quality time with two partners and three friends, then it wouldn’t be surprising if I felt stressed and overburdened. Some people certainly struggle with over-commitment to others in this way, but even they understand, on some level, that this leads to tiredness, burn-out, and letting people down, since you inevitably can’t do everything you’ve committed to. We intuitively understand that we just can’t do 25 hours of work within a single day and we can’t attend three events at the same time. And so we don’t make commitments to others in that way.

But when the parties involved are internal, suddenly people think it’s free and unproblematic to make arbitrary commitments. And then, when they (inevitably) can’t fulfil these internal micro-commitments, they expect it to feel ok.

To-do list items as negative comparison machines

Another framing for why to-do lists are a bummer is that each to-do item gestures to:

• an imagined future possible world where I have done the thing

• A note of ‘I prefer that world’ or ‘that world is better than this world’ (if that world wasn’t allegedly better, no part of you would have put the item on the to-do list)

This naturally induces comparisons between this hypothetical, multiply-improved world, and the real, present world that I live in now: the world where all of these things are not done, the dispreferred world. And negative comparisons are known to be depressogenic. If I went around continually thinking about I could be richer, have more friends, have fewer health issues, live in a less crazy sociopolitical time, etc., it would be no wonder if I was depressed. It’s fitting that Moran calls her List the ‘shadow self’ of her gratitude practice. Gratitude journalling is good for wellbeing because it leads you to focus on the ways in which your life is already good; to-do lists are bad for wellbeing because they’re a list of all the ways your life is suboptimal. They’re a negative comparison machine.

Lists based on other verb forms

What next?

Imagine if instead to infinitive or gerundive-y to-do lists, we wrote lists based on other grammatical moods:

• The ‘I’m doing’ list: a list of projects that you’re in the middle of. This list might remind you that you are actually are a busy, efficacious person who Does Shit and help you avoid taking on too much. Or, if it’s very empty, it might be a sign that you should look for more projects.

• The ‘I have done’ list: like the ‘I’m doing’ list, but for projects you’ve completed. Useful for job applications.

• The ‘I will do’ list: a bit like a to-do list, but something only goes on there if you’re really confident that, inasmuch as it’s within your personal control, you will do the thing at some point. This sort of list could help you keep track of things without generating a feeling of over-commitment or shouldiness. You don’t need to stress about these things: you will do them at some point, when you’re ready. It’s fine.

• The ‘I could do’ list: In contrast to the ‘I will do’ list, this list contains items that some part of you at some point was like ‘hmm, I should do that’, but that realistically, when you are totally honest with yourself, you’re not sure that you will ever get round to, and probably the universe would not end if you never did it.

• The ‘I get to do’ list? I’ve been known to write things like ‘watch Jet Lag: the Game’ or ‘play Paperback with partners’ on informal to-do lists: not because these things are chores or obligations, but because they are, say, 2 out of 15 things that I would like to do on my Saturday, if I lived in an ideal world where my Saturday was 70 hours long. But the problem with lumping fun things and chores together is that the chores can infect the fun things with choriness. Hence the ‘get to do’ list, where you separately list things that you want to do and that you’d like to make time for.

The ‘I could do’ list is the most similar to the traditional to-do list, but I think the reframe could be very mentally healthy. After all, ‘maybe’ isn’t a commitment. If it’s only an ‘I could do’ list, you don’t need to feel bad about yourself even if you never do any of the tasks. They were just suggestions! (Related: translating ‘shoulds’ into choices with tradeoffs).

I started this section in a sort of shitposty spirit, but after writing my first draft, I decided to actually implement this idea and replace my to-do list with these indicative-verb lists instead. So far, it does feel a lot more relaxing! Another thing I’ve done is divide my ‘I could do’ list into subsections according to the reason why things might be a good idea: e.g. ‘check if I want to cancel any subscriptions’ is in the subsection ‘to have more money’, whereas ‘get a belt that is comfy’ is in the subsection ‘to feel pretty/have better personal aesthetics’. This is (a) because I feel like I often naturally want to batch admin activities by theme (e.g., if I’m already buying shoes online, I might as well also buy tops online while I’m at it), and (b) it helps me be more reflective about why some part of me thinks that doing these things is a good idea. Do I really believe that this activity might help me realise an important value or achieve an important goal?

I will report back! A good thing about the Power of Ideas is that if you’re being oppressed by an evil Idea, it’s relatively easy to get a new one.

1. ‘You do not have to be good’—absolute catnip to over-achieving PhD students.

2. This is transcribed from the audiobook, so there may be some mistakes in typography, though I’m impressed by how well Caitlin (who read the audiobook) manages to pronounce capital letters.