Science Says 1 Word Will Supercharge Your To-Do List

Lots of people love their to-do lists. Take my wife: she has several going at any given time. Task lists keep her focused, on track, and for want of a better word, reassured: writing tasks down eliminates any nagging “I hope I remember to do (that)” concerns.

Other people have a love-hate relationship with their to-do lists. Start the day with ten things on your list, “only” check off nine, and regardless of how much you did accomplish, you feel you failed. Their to-do list helps keep them on track, but it may not make them feel good about what they’ve achieved.

Either way, to-do lists work.

But one simple addition can make them work even better.

A study published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that students who spent a moment writing down why a particular topic had relevance to their life, or to the life of a family member or friend, were much more successful than those who did not. In short, they added a “why” to their task list.

Interestingly, the writing exercise showed the largest benefits for student groups at greatest risk of academic failure, which makes sense: the harder the task — or the less likely you are to think you can achieve it, and therefore are more likely to quit — the more taking a few seconds to actually write down your “why?” will matter.

It’s hard to stay the course, much less tackle an unpleasant, boring, or difficult task, when it’s “just” a task. Send an apology to an upset customer? Sift through 50 applications to choose three people to interview? Deal with a poorly performing employee? Those tasks are easy to skip, or put off.

Until you include a “why”:

• Apologize to the customer because it’s important to me to repair our professional and personal relationship
• Create an interview shortlist because hiring a new production supervisor will improve our efficiency and costs, and free me up to focus on bigger-picture goals
• Talk to the employee about his performance because he’s dragging the team down, and because I really want him to succeed

Here’s a simple example. We have a small second-floor deck with a flat rubber roof underneath and a drain that carries away rainwater. The drain got clogged, debris from nearby trees collected under the deck… I needed to remove the deck boards, clean the rubber roof, patch a small hole that caused a leak into the room below, and put everything back together. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but — in the same way that every to-do list has at least one item you simply don’t want to tackle — for whatever reason, it felt like a big deal to me.

So I removed a couple of deck boards, found the hole, and patched it. The important part was done: no more water leaking into the garage. But the sub-structure of the deck was rotted, some of the flashing needed to be replaced… and I kept putting that part off.

Until I added a “why” to the task. Since the deck is off the kitchen, my wife uses it as an herb garden. She likes growing herbs, likes grabbing a little rosemary or basil or parsley when she cooks… it’s fun for her. Once I added a why to my to-do list — “finish the deck so she can enjoy her herb garden again” — I knocked it out that afternoon. 

Why? Because now the task had relevance to someone close to me, and therefore to me.

That’s the beauty of a “why to-do list.” The less appealing, the more difficult, the more complicated, the less likely you are to be motivated to start — much less finish — the more taking a few seconds to write down your “why” matters.

Try it. Add a “why” beside the items on your to-do list that seem hard, or boring, or intimidating. Write down why it matters. Write down how you, or someone around you, will benefit. Write down what you’ll learn. What you’ll gain.  

Turn your to-do list into a why to-do list: write down the “what,” then add the “why.” 

And then do the same for some of your bigger goals, those lingering goals that don’t make your to-do list, whose pursuit tends to get sacrificed in the service of other tasks or goals. (Or for doing things for other people; you’re probably a lot better at doing things for others than for yourself.) 

Write down why you want to start a side hustle, or business. Write down why you want to go back to school. Write down why you want to spend more time with your family. Write down why you want to get healthier and fitter.

Don’t just make a list of tasks. Or goals. Write down why each item matters. 

Even though it only takes a moment, the impact on what you accomplish will be dramatic.

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