Sick of your todo list not getting done? If you have an overwhelming to do list, it might be doing more than just getting neglected. It mighty actually be hurting your performance in more ways than you realize.

High performance today is about being clever. It’s about working smarter, prioritizing the million things bustling for your attention, finding creative solutions and finding new opportunities to improve.

The part of our brain that is most responsible for this is called the Pre-Frontal Cortex. But while the PFC tends to do this high value thinking, it’s also responsible for some very low level stuff as well.

And here’s the real problem:

This PFC only has a limited fuel supply. If you spend you time and energy doing the low value things, it leaves less fuel for the high value things. This concept of a performance fuel tank is a good analogy. If you have burnt all your fuel – if you’re fatigued, sleep deprived, or have spent an entire day doing high level thing – then you are less able to do things like make decisions, control emotions and behaviours or think critically. That PFC doesn’t function as well.

So what has your to do list got to do with all this?

Well, one of the low value things we do is hold things in short-term memory. Think about when someone gives you a phone number when you’ve got nothing to write on. The process of remembering that number – holding it in short term memory – for two minutes while you find a pad and pen is exhausting, right? Now imagine trying to actually do a problem solving activity while you�re remembering that number? Impossible.

A similar thing happens when you have a long to-do list. Most people spend an abnormal amount of their day trying to remember what they have to do. Thinking about who you can call in the car, wondering what you have to do when you get into the office etc. And all this �recall� burns a lot of cognitive �fuel� � leaving less to do the really important things.

Here are some things you can do to get that to-do list under control:

1) Write everything down � in one place

When you write things down all of a sudden it signals to the PFC that it can stop trying to remember. And you free it up to do some of the more important work. What is most important about this is to make sure that everything is in one place. Most people have a few different places for their tasks � their email inbox, a spiral notebook, their outlook folders � and this only adds to the angst. Now, you don�t just have to remember what you�ve got to do, you�ve got to worry about where everything is and if you�ve overlooked something

2) Think about �Task Categories�, not tasks

The reality is that even if you write things down, you�re going to still try to remember what you have to do when you get to the office. You have to write two reports, return three phone calls and construct five emails. To lighten the load of these things swimming around in your head, try to think in terms of Task Categories. These might include: Business Development, Administration, Report Writing� pick the four to six categories of things that are most important and fill your day. When we think in terms of categories, we can say �when I get to the office I have to do two hours of Business Development� instead of thinking about the ten individual tasks.

This is also handy as our scope of memory is about 4-6 items. At this level, it doesn�t take as much performance fuel to keep them in our head.

3) Park Everything in a time slot

Another way to get things out of your head is to �park� them in a specific time. Have you got two hours free from 12-2pm? Then schedule the tasks that you�ll get done in those two hours. For some reason, parking things is much like doing them. We can rest assured that we have found time to take care of them, so we stop worrying about them � but this only happens when we are specific about what we are going to do and when.

This also has the added benefit of stopping us from having to make decisions about what to do. Usually, when confronted with a decision, we tend to go for the easiest option. When you�ve already planned what you�re going to do, the decision is removed.

Working smarter today is about understanding how we free up resources to do our best thinking more often and for longer. This simple adjustment to managing your task list will create less stress and leave more resources available for you to do your best work.

Less noise leads to more connections

More and more is being proven about the positive effect that tranquil environments have on our mental performance.� In a recent study, it was found that calming environments cause an increase in the number of brain regions that connect with each other � something which has been shown to greatly boost out cognitive performance and lead to inspired, creative thinking.

The physiology is simple.� We get �stuck� in a thinking rut when there is only one region of our brain that is active.� You have experienced this when you have been trying to solve a problem � or trying to remember the words to a song � when you keep thinking along the same track and are unable to get that train of thought out of your head��.you keep thinking of the same (wrong) lyrics or the same (wrong) solution.

Slow down so you can hear

However, when you allow your brain to slow down, you begin to �hear� the activity that is going on in the other regions of your brain � this is what leads to �breakthrough ideas� as you connect memories and prior knowledge to the current problem you are trying to solve.� When you remember the words to that pesky song, you no doubt start to visualize where you were (listening to the visual cortex) and maybe even what you were doing (listening to the motor cortex), and – BAM! -� you remember the words to the song.

Now, think about how valuable this ability is.� Wouldn�t you like to capitalize on this whenever you need to?� Well, the problem with most work environments is that they just don�t allow this to happen.� The constant stress that is imposed by time or poor managers or an overly-heavy focus on outcomes decreases our chances of this actually happening.� In fact, the more stress that we are exposed to, the narrower our focus and our thoughts become.

So think about the work environment that you create as a manager.� Or, on an individual level, think about the amount of time you give yourself to kick back and be calm.� Not only is this good for decreasing our general stress response � the science tells us that it will also lead to breakthrough ideas and clearer thinking.

Trying to remember stops you from performing

There was once a paper published quite a few years ago that showed that we can only remember a maximum of seven things at any one time, before some form of ‘memory deficit’ started to take place.

But recently, there have been findings to suggest otherwise.� And it is not on the higher side.

It seems that we can really only hold four things in our short term memories at any given time.� That’s it.� The figure of seven might actually have been a bit optimistic and only possible if those seven things were of the utmost simplicity.

What does this mean for our productivity, effectiveness and managing teams?

Holding things in short-term memory reduces our ability to do the ‘important things’

When I ask people to tell me how many things are� on their task lists every day, they generally come back with anywhere between ten and twenty.� The problem is, that when I walk back to the office from a meeting, those twenty things are spinning around in my head as I try to prioritise how I am going to manage the next two hours that I have in the office.� What should I do first?� What is most important?

Here’s the thing.� The same part of our brain involved in trying to remember those twenty things is also used to do the important stuff.� The stuff that actually adds value to our jobs, like decision-making, problem-solving and creative thinking.� The fuel for this sort of thinking is a limited resource – that means that if I am burning fuel trying to remember, I have less for higher order processing.

What’s the answer?

Well, there are two things that you can do right now to stop burning up your mental ‘fuel’ with useless activity and start to conserve it for the more important things.

First, we need to ‘chunk’ down all our information where possible.� Instead of those twenty tasks bobbing through your head, try reducing them to four ‘macro’ tasks.� This sounds like cheating, but our brain is happier holding a smaller number of complex tasks rather than many simple ones.� This is why it is easier to remember a phone number when you break it down into two, three or four groups of numbers.

Secondly, the more you can get things out of your head and onto a piece of paper (or screen or whiteboard) the better.� If you are trying to decide between five different things, the simple act of writing them down helps to free up brain capacity for making the decision.� You are no longer burning ‘fuel’ holding them in memory, which means you have more for processing.

This can be applied to task lists, team goals and KPI’s.� With two many things to remember, our brain’s natural instinct is to do one of two things: 1) use more processing capacity just to hold things in our short-term memory, or 2) just forget about them.� It takes too much effort.

If you have a big meeting or presentation coming up then make sure you finish it the day before it is due.� When you sleep on it, it will consolidate the learning/knowledge.� You might even get an insight that you didn�t have the day before.

Three of the things we know about sleep and performance are:

1) A nap improves brain function

Sleep and meditation both seem to rejuvenate the brain’s Pre Frontal Cortex.� This part of the brain is responsible for the most important tasks that we do day-to-day including problem-solving, prioritising, decisions making and, sometimes most importantly, stopping unwanted behaviours and thoughts from occurring.� Sleep has been shown to improve all of these functions.

2) When we sleep, we consolidate learning

While our bodies rest, our brains are going haywire.� The millions of neural circuits are re-playing some the learning that has taken place during the day and are reinforcing it, making the neural connections thicker and stronger.� If you have been repeating something during the day, trying to consolidate it into memory, chances are that the consolidation will happen most effectively when you are asleep that night.

3) A quiet mind leads to insight problem solving

If there is a new connection to be made, a new problem to be solved or an ‘a-ha’ moment to be had, you are most likely to achieve these with a quiet mind.� While our current ways of thinking have strong neural connections within the brain, having been reinforced over many years, it is the new connections that provide the insights we sometimes need.� These new connections are weaker and we require a quiet mind to actually ‘hear’ them.� Brain analysis shows that these insights are preceded by a quietening of brain activity – something that happens automatically when you are about to drift off to sleep, and just as you wake up.

To read the other 12 Performance Habits click here

There is some more evidence out of Berkeley, California, to prove that recovery aids cognitive performance.

In a memory recall exercise, participants went through a rigorous memory exercise and then tried to recall the items they had memorised. One group then had 70-90mins of rest and recovery, while the other group did not. The groups then had another round of recalling the things that they had originally learnt.

The rest group performed the best of the two, and in many cases actually performed better than their first try – recalling more information than they had immediately after the exercise. It seems that rest, recovery and sleep allow the brain to consolidate memory and possibly transfer learning from short to long term memory.

The upshoot for performance? If you have to memorise a presentation, data or something similar, make sure that you have a chance to learn it and then sleep on it before having to deliver. This will help your ability to recall details.

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