In Praise of the Old School To-Do List

And the steno pad.

I am a productive person. At a minimum, every week, I write three pieces for Medium, three pieces for MLB.com, a long, semi-ambitious sports column every week for New York magazine, a big personal essay at my Saturday newsletter, host three different podcasts and try to run 30 miles. (You can see the results of all of this at that aforementioned newsletter.) That’s the minimum. I also write regularly for Vulture, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and whoever else will have me. And the paperback version of my novel How Lucky just came out, and last week, I turned in the first draft of my next novel to HarperCollins, a book that will be published next May. I also occasionally like to hang out with my family and friends. I try to keep busy. I like to make stuff.

I’m often asked how I make all this stuff, how I remain so productive. This is usually asked with a little bit of suspicion, like I’m secretly addicted to cocaine, or have never met my children — like being productive is somehow an aberration, like there must be some dark secret to it. But there isn’t. The only thing it requires, I’ve found, is organization. If I am make a plan to finish everything I’m required to finish, I’m able to do so without being manic and overwhelmed. The trick is to be explicit about what has to be done, and being able to know when it is completed. Which is to say: You really just need a to-do list. Just write out a to-do list.

I’m writing this to you on a Monday morning, and my current to-do list is above. Look, it’s right here:

This is actually a pretty light list. (I’m still waiting on edits from the first draft of that book. Usually the list, when I sit down on Monday night to make it, extends to a second page. When I get those edits back, it will.) But it is nothing more than a series of achievable tasks, broken down, individually. There’s a lot to do. But if I give myself the satisfaction of crossing off each task when I’ve finished one, it doesn’t feel like the world weighing on my shoulders. It feels almost like a scavenger hunt.