785: Make Your Task List Work for You, with Liane Davey

Liane Davey: Thoughtload

For the past 25 years, Liane Davey has researched and advised teams on how to achieve high performance. She is the author of You First and The Good Fight and is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review. She is the author of the new book Thoughtload: Manage the Madness and Free Your Team to Do Great Work (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

We all love to hate our task lists. However, we can do a lot better with just a bit of strategy. In this conversation, Liane and I explore how to make our task list work for us instead of against us.

Key Points

• Often it’s not really the workload that’s crushing – it’s more so the thinking about all the workload. That’s what thoughtload is.
• The problem with a to-do list is that everything goes on it. Thus, to-do lists are terrible for managing your attention.
• Instead of one task list, keep a limited amount of tasks on three priority lists.
• Category 1 list: your most important outputs and outcomes.
• Category 2 list: what you do to help others achieve their most significant outcomes.
• Category 3 list: administrative stuff.

Four questions determine what gets on your lists:

• Important (an activity that will add value to a key output or outcome)?
• Urgent (something with growing negative consequences if you wait)?
• Targeted (a task that no one can do as efficiently or effectively as you)?
• Essential (core to creating the critical value, not just a nice-to-have)?

Resources Mentioned

• Thoughtload: Manage the Madness and Free Your Team to Do Great Work by Liane Davey (Amazon, Bookshop)*

Interview Notes

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

• The Scientific Secrets of Daily Scheduling, with Daniel Pink (episode 332)
• Align Your Calendar to What Matters, with Nir Eyal (episode 431)
• How to Take Back Your Evenings, with Guy Winch (episode 783)

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.