Doing Doing Done!

If there’s one tool every self-improver leans on, it’s the rugged To Do list. Like the fork, screwdriver, and fork, the To Do list is timeless in its simplicity and its importance. So much has been written about the To Do list, most famously in David Allen’s Getting Things Done, but I’ll limit my comment to: all the entries on To Do lists are extremely important, including those crossed-out.

Most people adopt a ‘roll over’ approach to To Do lists: they take the unaccomplished entries from the previous day’s To Do list, write them again, and add some more for the new day. The accomplished goals are lost. I think one misses a lot by only focusing on the goals To Do, and not the goals you Have Done.

There’s a negative bias to only having To Do lists. The list itself can create all kinds of procrastination anxieties. There’s no balance. One can’t see the accomplishments of one’s past.

It’s a supreme waste to simply abandon those tasks you have accomplished, when in fact your accomplished tasks live on far more palpably that your unaccomplished goals, which sit idly on paper. Therefore, I highly recommend you create a “Have Done” list. You can obviously think back and list all the goals that you’ve completed over your life, or over the past day; the level of detail is up to you.

There are a number of sites where you can create and update To Do lists, and also Have Done lists. I highly recommend them. The most popular is probably 43things.com but there are others.

So, sit back, and review all that you do!