Why Does Keeping a To-do List in Your Head Cost So Much?
David Allen says a to-do list kept in your head costs a stack of broken agreements with yourself. The part of the mind that holds "buy cat food" or "hire a vice president" has no sense of past or future, so it treats those jobs as due all the time. That is why the list can wake someone at 3 in the morning. A person can do only one thing at a time, and the head still acts as if every open item is happening now.
Finishing the task is not what repairs the agreement. Getting it out of the head does. He says a broken agreement, with someone else or with yourself, disintegrates trust. The way out, in his account, is one of three moves: do not make the agreement, keep it, or renegotiate it. Renegotiating is the move most people skip. A person can feel good about what they are not doing only when they know what they are not doing. A written list brings relief because they can see they cannot do all of it right now. The grief is the pile of agreements they had not kept. For the professionals he coaches, just naming what has their attention, before any organizing or prioritizing, often takes one to six hours.
