Cross it off!

There is something so extremely satisfying about crossing things off a check-list that I have one friend who adds already completed items to her list just so she can mark them off.  (I wish I’d thought of that!)

Anyway, I am especially appreciative of this miracle today on this Miracle Monday because I have managed—more by luck, possibly, than good management—to wrestle my recent To Do lists into a level of such granularity as to make it possible for me to cross a number of things off.

One of the most interesting—to me—concepts in David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, is the idea that most To Do lists fail because they mix projects and tasks.  According to Allen, you need separate lists.

Projects are things you can’t complete without taking multiple steps.  “Buy new windows,” for example, cannot be crossed off your list unless you have already done the research, gotten the estimates, and made your decisions about type and style and when and where and so on.

“Call glass company for appointment,” however, is a thing you can do and cross off.

So, I try to keep a list of projects from which I try to pull out tasks in the smallest increments possible. Because then, I get to cross things off the list! Which, of course, is only the visible and supremely satisfying proof that the project has been advanced.

But, oh!  How satisfying it is!

And how tangled things get when I forget that.

The item on the To Do list that sits there day after day, week after week, is almost always, upon closer investigation, a project. It doesn’t get done because it is not something a person can do.

Which is why I try to remember to take a step back whenever I am confronted by those lingering, uncrossed-off entries and realize that the actual task is to make a plan.  Move it off the task list onto the project list.  Break it down into the actual steps that need to be accomplished.

Those are the things that should be put on the To Do lists.

And today, I can celebrate moderate success at remembering that and the advancement—incremental though it may be—of several projects.

Yay!