Mastering the Surprising Power of Randomness
A new trick to conquer your to-do list – try randomness!
Do you have tasks? I have tasks. Lots of them. And I never know which to do first. If only there were a natural law that would tell me.
Nature. Nature is very productive! Nature made the entire world. That was pretty productive. We use microscopes to unravel nature’s secrets. If you use a powerful enough microscope, you discover nature’s big secret: quantum mechanics. Reality is random. Probably.
If reality is random, then surely productivity must be random, too.
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Productivity Can be Random
Albert Einstein said “God does not play dice with the Universe.” But Albert never met my friend Caroline.
Caroline is a productivity powerhouse. Her business makes more money in a week than most people make in a month, and she only seems to work about 10 hours. She’s always calling me up midday to go for walks, or build replicas of the Eiffel Tower out of toothpicks. I asked how she has so much free time. She told me about her productivity system. Even though I’m fairly sure she’s not Mother Nature, her system is, well, pretty random.
Put All Your To-Do’s in One Place
First, you need a single master system for managing your tasks. Caroline uses her Gmail inbox. You can use a paper list or an electronic list. You’ll be scanning your to-do’s 25 at a time, so go into your settings and set the number of items displayed per page to 25.
If you use a paper list, you’ll have to count out your list into blocks of 25, and treat every chunk of 25 undone items as separate pages. There’s no magic to the number 25 (because there’s no such thing as magic — sorry, kids — there’s also no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, or Tooth Fairy), but she finds it a good balance to make rapid progress.
Highlight To-Do’s and Important To-Do’s
Since Caroline’s to-do list is in her inbox, she has to separate these items from the regular emails. She flags all the messages that are to-do items with yellow stars. The important ones, she flags with purple stars. There should always be more yellow stars than purple stars, or your bar for what constitutes important is too low.
If you’re using your email inbox as your to-do list, switch to the view where you see just starred items, so there’s nothing visible but yellow and purple starred items.
Give Yourself Over to Fate!
Now invoke Fate! Laugh at Einstein! Roll the dice to get a number between 1 and 25. If you don’t own a 25-sided die, use a random-number generator. There are a billion of them on the web and in the app store of your choice. I like random.org, which bases its random numbers on atmospheric lightning flashes. When its creators are feeling especially sadistic, they get even more randomness by factoring in the terrified screams of small children who are frightened by the thunder.
Hit Your Important Items First
You now have a random number, like 23. Take the last digit, 3, and count down to the third purple star in your list. Do that item now.
When you’ve beaten that item into submission, remove it from the list. Caroline moves the item out of her inbox. If you’re using paper, mark it as done.
Next use the full number. Count down from the top of your inbox, skipping any items that are completed. Do that task next, whether it’s purple or yellow.
Then go to page 2, count down the full number, and do that item, as well. Repeat for page 3 if necessary.
Leave Incomplete Tasks Alone
You may need to use taskus interruptus. There are things in life we like to finish once we’ve started. (If you’re under 18, just pretend I’m talking about video games.) But sometimes you can’t or don’t want to finish a task. Work until it seems reasonable to switch, and leave the task where it is in your list. Don’t strike it off. Soon enough, the Hand of Fate will bring it back. Quick tip: change a yellow star to purple to increase the chances you’ll get to it again soon.
Four Pages? Emergency Mode!
When I asked if she then goes to page four, Caroline gave me a withering look. “You should never have more than 75 items on your list. That means you’re out of control. You need to go into emergency mode and power through items until you’re back under two pages.”
You may decide to argue with her, but just FYI, she was holding a whip and wearing a steel helmet with horns when she said that, and had a nametag reading “Brunhilda.” I’m not going to argue. More than three pages means it’s time to trim.
Purple Stars Stack the Deck
Caroline let me in on a secret: this system is designed for her to cheat. It’s random, yes, but the purple stars stack the deck. Yellow stars only get worked on in the second pass. Purple stars might get worked on either in the single-digit pass or the double-digit pass. Either way, she’s continuously whittling away at the list and keeps (random) track of her tasks so nothing is missed or forgotten.
Tasks and Subtasks Stack the Deck
I asked how she handles really large tasks. She cheats there, too. If she has a big task like, “Rescue avalanche victims,” she breaks it down into subtasks: prepare barrel of rum, train St. Bernard, and cause avalanche (in Southern California, very few avalanches happen on their own. She’s all about creating opportunity). By putting all those in her list as separate tasks, she increases the chances that some element of Project: Avalanche Rescue will be worked on at any given time.
Using random numbers to choose your tasks means you won’t procrastinate. When a task’s number comes up, it comes up. You’ll even find you work on things you otherwise would have ignored for months. As long as you fill your task list only with things you really want and intend to do, your very best bet for productivity may be a roll of the dice. Nature would want it that way.
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About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
