A Leadership Reminder: Your To-Do List Is Not A Plan

To-do lists can keep us on track, but they never create a new track. Only an intentional plan does that.

I love keeping to-do lists. They help me stay on task, keep track of my progress, determine who should be doing what, and so much more.

But I have to constantly remind myself that a to-do list is not a plan.

Starting a to-do list isn’t the creation of a plan, and crossing that last item off the list (as embarrassingly satisfying as that feels) is not the completion of a plan. It’s just a list. Helpful, to be sure, but it’s not a plan.

If I want to get things done, I need a to-do list. If I want to get important things done, I need a plan.

Usually, a good plan will involve a to-do list – maybe several lists for every step in the implementation of the plan. But a good plan is much more than that. Read More