Done Is Better Than To-Do
How a done list changes the way we measure a day.
A colleague of mine once remarked that my notes and to-do lists are an absolute disaster. As much as I’d like to disagree, he’s not wrong. Things are frequently scribbled on scraps of paper in short, incomplete thoughts that are impossible for others to understand.
And yet, my to-do lists and the feelings around them are probably not much different than anyone else. They’re long, never finished, and most days I add more than I cross off. Instead of feeling organized, I’m left with a nagging sense that I should be doing more than I am.
That’s why an idea in Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals was so intriguing to me. Rather than keeping a to-do list, Burkeman suggests starting a done list:
My favorite way of combating the feeling of productivity debt in everyday life is to keep a ‘done list,’ which you use to create a record not of the tasks you plan to carry out, but of the ones you’ve completed so far today — which makes it the rare kind of list that’s actually supposed to get longer as the days go on.
As Marie Curie understood, our default stance is to measure our actual accomplishments against all the things we could, in principle, still do. But that’s a yardstick against which we’re doomed to find ourselves perpetually wanting. By contrast, what makes a done list so motivating and encouraging is that it implicitly invites you to compare your output to the hypothetical situation in which you stayed in bed and did nothing at all. And what makes that comparison any less legitimate than the other one?
What a wonderfully simple reframing. A list that showcases what you’ve accomplished rather than what you haven’t. It takes a self-imposed standard — everything you could have done — and replaces it with a better one: what you actually did.
Practically speaking, there’s still a need for a list or another system to keep track of the things to be worked on, but making a done list has the potential to be transformative.
In addition to the psychological benefits, moving away from accomplishment-based thinking allows for clarity about what’s important. To-do lists can distract from action, especially on the biggest or hardest things. They reward completion, biasing us toward what’s easy to finish instead of what matters. I know I’ve spent plenty of time on low-impact tasks just for the feeling of crossing something off. Moving to a system that isn’t defined by obligation makes it much easier to decide what actually deserves your time.
The shift isn’t easy. It’s hard to shake the feeling that there’s always more you could do if you only had the time. A done list won’t magically clear your inbox or eliminate deadlines. But it might lessen the guilt that comes from asking yourself why didn’t I do more? And let you ask a better question: what did I actually do with the time I had?