In Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, authors Burmeiser and Tierney note that the average person has 150 different tasks on their to-do list. I immediately went to my to-do list and numbered them: only 133 top-line tasks (plus 85 second-tier tasks). Phew. I’m not even average!
On the good side, to-do lists can help us keep track of what needs to be done (obviously) and each time we can check an item off the list, we get a little hit of dopamine, the feel-good hormone. We can use to-do lists to prioritize our tasks and think about dropping the ones that are at the bottom of the list.