Episode 115 - Why Your To Do List is Screwing You Up

Alchemist's To Do List?

The Thursday Thesis  - 06/09/2018

I am deeply attached to my “To Do” list - after all, we have history together. We’ve been through everything, from getting sober to getting ripped; from getting hitched to coming unstuck – well, we’ve done it all, my list and me.

You may know someone like that: they have a list for everything and everything has its list...

So I’m going to confess to being stupid (again!) and drag a glaring omission out into the light, so that I can remind myself of a great idea that dropped in my lap nearly twenty years ago, but I was too naive and stubborn to pick up and use.

The idea is ever-so-simple, as the best ideas usually are, though their value often slips past us in the first, or even the fifty first, case.

Don’t go straight to your To Do list; instead, start a new list. This is not your To Do list version 2.0 – this is your Who Do list.

This is the list where you write down what you want done, then assign that work or task to someone other than yourself.

So the Who Do list asks you “who can you get to do it?” instead of “how are you going to do it?” and that’s a real game-changer.

Dump everything onto your Who Do list, first – assign the tasks that other people or software can do at least as well as you can (preferably at lower cost, too) and only deal with the jobs and activities that:
a: only you can do
b: are too expensive to farm-out
c: you really love to do

I plan to get really good at this over the next few years – I just wish I’d picked up on it first time around, because I’d now be an expert with a Who Do list, not a overworked muppet with a Dead Sea Scroll of a To Do list.

What tasks are you going to move from your own To Do list and onto your Who Do list?

Let me know if this works for you, vi [email protected]