I don’t know about you but every once in a while (OK, almost every day), I write a task down on my to-do list that I’ve already done just so I can check it off. There’s something amazingly satisfying about putting a simple line through a job, especially if it’s the hardest one of the day. It builds momentum even if it’s the least demanding chore or errand. One line across leads to two, two leads to three, and then the motivation soars. Well, not always, but sometimes.
That check mark serves another function. David Allen, in “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity,” wrote that “Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started.” We carry a lot of residual attention from holding onto something that we haven’t yet finished. Crossing it off means we’re carrying one less thing in the day’s heavy mental load.
On our lists, we carry over to the next day what we didn’t finish the day before. That carryover can spill from one day to the next, one week to the next, then one month to the next. At some point it’s best to look in the mirror and tell the truth: we’re just not going to do that one job because we never wanted to do it. In that famous New Yorker cartoon a businessman says into the telephone line, “No. Thursday’s out. How about never — is never good for you?” Allen discussed what helps drive real momentum: doing first what we like least: “What we truly need to do is often what we most feel like avoiding.” Then the rest of the day seems like a breeze.
I often ask people when they started to make to-do lists, and the answer is startlingly similar: high school. Usually high school — and sometimes middle school — is the time when we’ve graduated from the homeroom teacher who helps keep everyone organized; we now have multiple classes in multiple classrooms with assignments from virtually everyone. Things begin to fall between the cracks, so we start making lists. The lists aren’t necessarily prioritized, mind you. There’s a hodgepodge of items that have to get done. Some have no deadline. It’s not clear what the consequences are if some tasks don’t get done. For some of us the urgent lives side-by-side with the important and the very unimportant on that list. “Visiting a sick friend” is right beneath “buy eggs” and followed by “finish major report.”
It’s hard to inspire completion when priorities haven’t been established or our goals are vague.
Many years ago, as a graduate student of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, zt”l I carefully observed his working methods and spoke with him about how he read and wrote so prolifically. He had incredible focus paired with an incredible sense of mission. In archival correspondence and interviews, he reflected on his own struggles with time management. It’s hard for some to imagine that a person so accomplished would be worried about the clock. But it makes total sense. There was so much he wanted to get done because he already got so much done. “Professionals,” wrote James Clear in “Atomic Habits,” “stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.”
I remember Rabbi Sacks once explaining at a lecture on the Torah reading of Lech Lecha that this play on words, which literally means go for yourself (Rashi explains it to mean for your own good) or to yourself (some journey within) actually mandates that Abraham sustain the course and forge ahead. His father, Terah, was the first person to leave Ur, but Terah died on the way. Abraham’s charge was to keep going. How easy it is, Rabbi Sacks quipped, to begin projects. How hard it is to complete them. I’ve never forgotten that teaching, especially when tempted to walk away from a difficult undertaking.
In keeping with the value of time, Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership will be hosting our annual leadership development one-day conference on Thursday, May 29, called “Elevate Your Productivity: Mastering Accountability and Focus.” Accountability consultant Diana Bloom and YU faculty member and host of the 18Forty podcast Rabbi Dr. Dovid Bashevkin will be joining me on the roster of speakers, along with conference organizers Rabbi Ari Rockoff and Aliza Abrams Konig. We will spend enriching time together thinking about our own productivity and follow through, networking with old friends and meeting new colleagues. Register at www.yu.edu/sackspd. Bring your entire department!
In “The Time Trap,” Alec Mackenzie questions the expression time management: “We cannot manage time. We can only manage ourselves in relation to time. We cannot control how much time we have; we can only control how we use it. We cannot choose whether to spend it, but only how. Once we’ve wasted time, it’s gone — and it cannot be replaced.” This has helped me reframe a well-known Talmudic expression, “There are those who acquire their world in one moment” (BT Avodah Zara 17a). Virtue is really the work of a lifetime, not the work of a moment. But in a moment, we can actually gain clarity on a decision that will change or shape our lives forever because we have the agency to choose how we spend and sanctify each moment.
Dr. Erica Brown is the vice provost for values and leadership at Yeshiva University and founding director of its Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership. Her latest books are “Morning Has Broken: Faith After October 7th” (Toby Press) and “The Torah of Leadership” (Maggid/Koren).
