Your brain really likes to think as little as possible. Thinking might be it's job, but the brain also is a bit lazy or busy sometimes.
Clear wording on your to-do list reduces the thinking-work your brain needs perform before taking care of your tasks.
So if you provide clear wording, you (and your brain) will be more willing to work on your to-dos - because they are less work to think of.
If your to-do is looks like that:
Call doctor
you and your brain will need to think a lot about it before finally doing it. What doctor do I need to call? And why? Is there anything wrong with me?
A better way of writing that to-do would be:
Call Doctor Smith and schedule a control appointment for March
You could just call the doctor whenever you read the to-do. No need of thinking about it again.
For all of my to-dos, I try to explain them as clear as possible. No matter if I write tasks for my personal to-do list or for my projects at work, if the tasks are explained and worded well, it is much easier to work on them for me.
At the beginning, it was hard for me to have clear, explaining wording on my to-dos. It seemed a bit strange to explain what to do next to myself. I mean, I already know that?
What helps me here is to imagine that I write the to-do for someone else.
In Austria and Germany, we have the tale of “Heinzelmännchen” (hine-cell-man-ken for my english-speaking friends).
You can imagine them as santa’s elves for personal use. They will come at night and do all of the work you couldn’t finish throughout the day.
In the classic tale, those little friends helped a shoemaker. They visited his shop and found a lot of unfinished shoes and boots on the floor. So they decided to help the shoemaker out and finished all of the shoes and boots for him.
Imagine, those little elves would come to your desk to help you out. There are no unfinished tasks lying around on the floor. You are working on your computer all day. So they start your computer, hack the password and open your to-do-list-app.
What a pity! They have no idea what to work on. They are wondering:
"What does all of that mean?"
Nothing is explained or clear, everything is confusing. Sorrowful, they leave your desk again without helping you. They are sad. You are sad. No happy end. If you only had well-explained and clear to-dos on your list!
Even if this might be a bit childish, I try to keep that in mind. If the “Heinzelmännchen” ever visit my office, they will find a clear-worded, well-explained to-do list to work on. No chance I will miss the opportunity of free workforce.
And if they won't come around, I still have a to-do list my brain likes to work on. Because the to-dos are so clear, even elves would understand.
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