What’s the worst that could happen?

Saturday my wife and I leave to go on a 5-night cruise.  Like a lot of people before they go on vacation, I made a list of all the things I need to do before we leave.  I sat down with a legal pad and within a matter of 20 minutes I generated 3 pages of tasks.  This was everything I could think of, including some items which could wait until after the trip, but I didn’t want to forget them so on the list they went.  I went to bed shortly afterward with the list lying on the nightstand.  For the next 45 minutes I continued to think of items and jotted them down by the light of my cellphone as the list grew to 4 pages.

I started my day early this morning digging into the items which had to happen today.  But for every one item I crossed off, I thought of three more to take its place.  My initial plan was to transfer all of the items into my trusted system, a pocket-sized Moleskine notebook, to use as my master task list.  I decided instead to transfer only those items that would have the greatest impact on my vacation time.  I applied the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 Rule, and transferred the 20% of tasks which would generate at least 80% of the results I desired. What was my criteria?  I asked one simple question:  What’s the worst that could happen if I don’t get this done before we leave?

If I could live with the worst case scenario then the task didn’t make it to the master list.   Some items, like “Find passport”, were no brainers.  Others were no brainers in the opposite direction.  Like “Return library books”.  I think we’ll survive with a fine of a couple dollars if I don’t get 5 books back to the library on time.  There were some gray areas, mostly related to clients and I believe most of those can be mitigated by setting expectations before I leave.  If I were going to be gone for 3 months, client related tasks would take on more importance.  But five days is a reasonable amount of time as long as statuses are communicated effectively ahead of time.

What happened to the 80% of the items which didn’t make the master task list?  By default they are going on the Someday/Maybe list, for those of you familiar with GTD.  Maybe I’ll get to them, maybe I want.  Maybe by the time I get to them, it won’t matter and I won’t have to do them at all.

Before I could really decide which tasks to transfer to my master task list I had to know what the end result would be.  For me it was simple:  To be on vacation with my wife and friends knowing that everything is well taken care of regarding my children, my clients and my finances.  If I could live with the worst case scenario for a task that didn’t negatively impact one of these three areas, then it didn’t make the cut.

So the next time you look at your to-do list and you have a finite amount of time to complete items, try these two questions:

1. “What is the end result I am working towards in the time I have allotted?”
2. Then for each task ask, “What’s the worst that could happen if I didn’t do this?”  or “Would not doing this negatively impact the end result I desire?”

Answering these questions can bring more clarity and allow you to quickly pare your task list to the essentials.  Sometimes we get so caught up in completing to-do lists that we can forget to step back and make sure that what we are working on is really going to generate what we desire.