“The one thing that our unconscious will not tolerate is evasion of responsibility.” – Robert A. Johnson

To-do lists are a simple tool, invented to get stuff done. You write down the item that needs to be completed and then you tick it off when it’s done.

You can do all sorts of things with your list. You can order the items in priority. You can create sub-tasks. You can set due-dates. But all these things and features are working toward the same goal, getting stuff done. I believe there’s been some books written about this.

Some of us rely on to-do lists because they hold us accountable. Without them, a task might land on someone else’s plate, or somewhere in our own nagging conscience before we realize we’re late or forgotten something. 

But like any tool, they can be misused. Just like we can buy excellent, well-constructed gym equipment and leave it to collect dust in the garage. We can misuse a to-do list too.

Misusing a to-do list is when we write down something but we don’t do it. It’s good that you’ve written it down, but then the due-date slips by and it’s still sitting there. You’ll get to it later right? Maybe it got less important or something. That’s fine.

You could also remove it, delete it. This is a bit more subtle. Maybe it’s not important anymore. And now, with a bit of helpful forgetting, or reasoning, your list is looking pretty good. You’ve cherry picked items that are pleasing, easy to complete and there’s only a handful of those left to do. 

I call this particular move drawer shoving. 

What I’m talking about has nothing to do with a to-do list, or some specific app or workflow. I’m talking about this process of acknowledging something and then hiding it or destroying it. Avoidance. Shoving it away into some drawer.

And what makes this tricky to get a handle on is that so much of it happens outside our awareness. The hypnotist Milton Erickson once pointed out that if someone has been skipping check-ups, they’ll actually speed up when walking past a dental clinic. Or if you’re hungry you’ll automatically slow down when passing a restaurant. You can see a similar phenomenon in body language. Some people will instinctively cover or rub their eyes when they don’t want to look at someone or something.

But we shouldn’t look away.

It’s one thing to be caught off guard by something you couldn’t have known about. You did the regular services on your car, but something weird still happened and now it’s busted. That sucks. It happens to all of us.
But it’s another thing entirely to know about a problem and shove it into a drawer. You see that the edge needs taping before you paint, you skip it, and a few days later you’re standing there thinking: Why did I do that?

Excuses don’t help either. I’ve used them all before. I can’t be bothered. No one will notice. It’s good enough. I don’t have time. I talk myself out of it. I’m scared. It’s not my job. Surely it’s unimportant.

No matter what, these shortcuts, hacks, and avoided stuff all tends to come back. Chekhov’s gun is real. Not immediately, not all at once and not always in the ways I expect.

When my junk drawer was getting emptied out on me at work, I’d blame co-workers as overly detail oriented. Or I’d think certain people were out to get me, to specifically point out my flaws and make me look bad. But if I was honest with myself, I already knew what they were going to point out, because I was the one who had consciously avoided it first! 

It comes back. It catches my attention somehow and reminds me for the millionth time, that I might be able to wiggle, obfuscate or lie my way out of some things, but it’s never possible to lie to myself.  

And even if it doesn’t come back. Even if you get away with it. Why not just assume that it will. Live like it will. Assume that it will bite you. Not in a paranoid, ‘prepper’ frame of mind, just in the spirit of intellectual honesty and the fact that you are always stuck with you. 

Assume anything that you know about, has at least the chance to be known by others. And when that inevitably happens, what’s going to be your excuse then?

I first wrote something about to-do lists in March 2014