Tuesday evening, quarter to ten. The children are asleep, the dishwasher is running, and then it hits you: the slip for the school trip was due back today. It is somewhere among the leaflets on the kitchen table, under the letter from the health insurance fund you still have not opened. Your mother rang this afternoon about her appointment with the cardiologist and you said you would call her back. You did not call her back.
None of these things is a problem in itself. A slip, a phone call, a letter. But they pile up, and they do not stay on the kitchen table. They stay in your head. And there they weigh more than you would expect.
Why small things weigh so much
Psychologists have long known that unfinished tasks keep circling in memory. It is known as the Zeigarnik effect, after the psychologist who described it in the 1920s. Your brain keeps open loops active, as if it wants to keep reminding you. With one thing, that is useful. With twenty at once, it becomes noise.
The researchers E.J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister showed in a series of experiments published in 2011 how that noise works. People with an unfinished goal at the back of their mind had more intrusive thoughts during an unrelated reading task and did worse on an anagram task. The striking part: the effect disappeared as soon as they wrote down a specific plan for that goal. They did not have to complete the task. They only had to decide when and how they would do it. It worked best for those who took the plan seriously and later carried it out.
That explains why making a list can bring relief, and why a vague list does not. “Ring Mum” keeps circling. “Ring Mum on Wednesday after work, from the car” lets your mind let go.
One place, and a fixed time
The first step, then, is to get everything out of your head and into one place. Which place matters less than there being only one. A notes app on your phone, an exercise book in the kitchen drawer, a whiteboard on the fridge. Anyone using three systems at once effectively has none.
But a list on its own is just a container. What makes the difference is giving each task a moment. It does not need to be a rigid schedule. It can be as simple as: this today, this this week, this on my admin evening.
That admin evening is, for many people, the most liberating part. Pick one fixed moment a month, or every fortnight if your family is large or you are caring for someone. That is where the things go that are not urgent but do need doing: checking invoices, sending the doctor's certificates to the health insurance fund, seeing whether your tax certificates have arrived, cancelling the subscription you have not used in months. Put all incoming paperwork in a single tray and only open it on that evening. Then you know nothing will be forgotten, and you do not need to think about it in between.
Keep what you want to keep in one place, with names you will still understand in two years' time. “Tax 2025” works better than “scan_0042”. In Belgium many tax slips can also be found in MyMinfin, which may save you a folder.
Three things a day, and the two-minute rule
A long list can also paralyse. You look at it and see only what is not done. It helps to choose, each morning or the evening before, three things that really have to happen today. Not ten. Three. Anything after that is a bonus.
There is also a rule popularised by the productivity author David Allen: if something takes less than two minutes, do it straight away. Confirming an appointment, replying “yes, fine” to an email, making a transfer that is already set up. Writing it down and finding it again later takes more effort than simply doing it.
That rule works badly, though, if your entire day consists of two-minute tasks. In an open-plan office where someone asks you something every five minutes, you lose your morning to small things and never get to the work that needs concentration. In that case, batch the small tasks instead: a quarter of an hour before lunch, a quarter of an hour before you head home.
Sharing is more than handing over tasks
In many households one person does most of the thinking. Who knows when the next vaccination is due, that the sandwich bags have run out, that the car insurance expires next month? The American sociologist Allison Daminger calls this cognitive labour. In her interview study of 35 couples she identified four stages: anticipating needs, identifying options, deciding, and monitoring whether it actually happened. That thinking work was often invisible, both to the person doing it and to their partner, and it was a frequent source of conflict. In her study, women did more of it, especially the anticipating and the monitoring.
That changes how you share. “Could you take the kids to swimming tomorrow?” takes a journey off your plate, not the thinking. Real sharing means one person takes over a whole area, from start to finish. One handles everything to do with school, including the teacher's messages and the PE kit that has to go in on Friday. The other handles the car, the insurance and the tax return. Whoever owns the area does not need reminding. And whoever hands it over has to let go, even when it gets done differently from how they would do it.
You can ask outside the family too. A neighbour who takes the children along to training, a brother who goes to the doctor with your father once a month. Most people are glad to help when the request is specific. “Let me know if I can do anything” rarely leads anywhere. “Could you pick up Lotte at four on Thursday?” does.
When a system is not enough
Everything above helps when life is busy but manageable. It helps much less when the cause is not organisation. If you are caring for a sick parent, going through a divorce or grieving, it is not your to-do list that is too long. Life is heavy, and no amount of planning fixes that. Blaming your system during a period like that only makes things harder for yourself.
Watch, too, for signs that you are no longer keeping up: you have been sleeping badly for weeks, you snap at your children, you forget things you never used to forget, or even small tasks feel like a mountain. If that lasts longer than a few weeks, talk to your GP.
Sometimes it helps to talk to someone outside your own circle. A psychologist or coach can help you see what you can let go of. And if the worries are practical, a debt that keeps growing, a dispute with your landlord, a question about an inheritance or contact arrangements for the children, advice from a lawyer or financial expert is often quicker than searching on your own. Your employer may offer that help free and in confidence through Meapy Health.
Sources
- Masicampo, E.J. & Baumeister, R.F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667-683. doi.org/10.1037/a0024192
- Daminger, A. (2019). The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor. American Sociological Review, 84(4), 609-633. doi.org/10.1177/0003122419859007
