Endless To-Do Lists

Alexander: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of the Effective Statistician. Today we talk about how you can get from endless to do lists to meaningful progress. And I will talk about a couple of strategies that you can do to take back control of your to do list. And I know that to do lists can become longer and longer and longer.

And that probably makes you feel pretty bad, overwhelmed, unproductive. And if this is you, then this episode is for you. And we’ll go a little bit into why actually you have these long to do lists and what kind of problems they create. And we’ll go into a couple of things you can do about it. First, why do I actually get all of that? If you [00:01:00] write down everything you could possibly do, then you get lots of tasks. And if you follow, for example, the Getting Things Done framework, GTD, Getting Things Done by David Irn. And you have these lists they can be endless.

Now, if you say yes to all things, yeah, that happens. And maybe even you don’t have one single to do list, but you have lots of different to do lists. So maybe an electronic to do list and you have something on paper and something you just keep in your inbox because you need to do about it. Something about it.

It becomes nearly impossible. To manage all of that. Yeah. And yes, I know some of to do lists are just kind of comments, probably in some kind of [00:02:00] documents that you need to go through. So there’s actually a task probably on your to do list that is look at this other to do list and then work through it.

So a couple of problems with that. First, it can make you feel paralyzed and really, If you lose the oversight of what now is most important it’s really frustrating. And also you might spend time on things that are less important because you have lost control of your to do list. And in the end, you get home at the evening, you have been busy, But you feel like I’ve never finished anything.

And at the end of the day, you look at your to do list and maybe it even got longer instead of shorter. And you [00:03:00] feel like you never can, catch up with all these kinds of different things. And that is super frustrating. And it can actually lead to depression called burnout here. Here’s a couple of different things you need to do.

Yeah. First thing is you need to understand what is the number one thing that makes everything else easier. Let me repeat this because that question is really important. What is the number one thing that you need to work on that will make everything else easier? And that thing might not even be on your to do list.

So maybe you need to spend a lot of time on working on tasks that come from a specific physician. And you have no control over that kind of angel stream of [00:04:00] things. Then maybe one thing you need to work on is you need to improve the relationship with that physician. So that you can have a good discussion about what is really important and what is nice to have.

Or maybe you need to put on your to do list. Something like, what are actually my goals that I really get measured on? Or maybe you need to understand the need behind something that is asked for. Yeah, you get asked all these, tables to be produced. But for what reason? What exactly will they drive?

What kind of decision will be based on that? And are all tables needed to make that decision? And at what quality are they needed to make that decision? If you don’t know these kind of things, [00:05:00] You can work on endless to do lists without really making big progress.

Second strategy, which I think is really important, is what I call the single bridge system. Think about it that way. All what you do, and all probably what you’re doing, And what the team is working on should come via a single bridge. And you can think about it like, all the resources that you have personally or that your team has is it’s like a small medieval city.

And that medieval city is surrounded by a big wall. And if that wall has just one bridge. Into it. One gate. Then, you can stand at that gate and make sure that only those tasks enter your city, your team, [00:06:00] that pass by that single gate, and you can manage it. In the same way, you should manage The tasks that land on your desk and your team’s desk.

So that there’s no tasks that enter your team, a. k. a. A medieval city that kind of creeps through some kind of backdoor or get thrown into the city or whatsoever. Yeah, everything needs to pass a certain kind of gateway so that you create one overall task list. And there you can break down larger tasks into actionable steps.

That is actually, if you have on your to do list something like write a protocol, write a manuscript, yeah? [00:07:00] These are too big of a tasks. I very often recommend that you have tasks that are no longer than 15 minutes. Yes, 15 minutes. 15 minutes is a nice kind of thing. You can always fit into your the gaps in your calendar.

And it’s something that you can tick off your to do list and really get the feeling of making progress. If you, for example, need to write a manuscript, then maybe you first say I out, just create the outline. Or, I just write the abstract. Or, I just draft the abstract. Something like this.