This is a guest post by Mike Reeves-McMillan.

To-do lists are a staple of productivity teaching. Whether you follow the Getting Things Done approach or the Put Things Off approach, or one of the dozen other popular or obscure methods, the to-do list is likely to appear in it somewhere.

They act as reminders, prompts, and motivators (it’s satisfying to cross things off, and gives a sense of achievement). However, …