© Jamie Grill/Getty Images/Tetra images RF Don’t be vague - make sure your list contains detail.
Almost everyone struggles with getting stuff done. But some of us struggle with the stage before that: just figuring out what it is we need to do. The to-do list is, in theory, the answer. It's a time-honoured system that's beautiful in its simplicity: work out what needs to be done and in what order, write down the tasks, do them, and then, one-by-one, cross them out.
Psychologist and author Dr David Cohen believes his struggle to stay organised is helped, but not entirely solved, by his to-do lists, which must be on paper - preferably in a diary - and need to be constantly monitored. "My family think I'm chaotic," he says, "but I would be much more so without my lists - they've kept me in line for years."
Cohen puts our love of to-do lists down to three reasons: they
dampen anxiety about the chaos of life; they give us a structure, a plan that we can stick to; and they are proof of what we have achieved that day, week or month.In less harried days, our memories might have done the work. Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik was perhaps the first to note the brain's obsession with pressing tasks. The so-called
"Zeigarnik effect" - that we remember things we need to do better than things we've done - stemmed from observing that waiters could only recall diners' orders before they had been served. After the dishes had been delivered, their memories simply erased who'd had the steak and who'd had the soup. The deed was done and the brain was ready to let go.
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