Last week I travelled to Hungary for a week. Determined to be fully organized and not for get anything I made a complete list of everything I needed to take. Then I very efficiently proceeded to go about processing the list. On the day of departure the limousine arrived. I was ready! I quickly put by bags in the trunk, waved goodbye to my family, and was on my way.

On the car ride to the Airport my cell phone rang. It was my wife informing me that I forgot my coat. As I was observing this information I looked down and noted that I’d also forgotten my walking shoes. The walking shoes were on the list, the coat the coat wasn’t.

The to-do list, the holy grail of loyal truly organized people, was my undoing. It gave me the illusion of being efficient and very much on top of the situation. But it has two great failings. The first is that it up obscures priority –of the 30 items but I had on my list, only five were truly necessary. Had I just done those five, and not worried about getting everything on the list done, I would have been much further ahead- specifically my feet would not be blistered and bruised today.

The second aspect is that when the list is complete, all thinking stops. From that point on it is as if we’re blinkers on and our entire focus is on processing the list, to the exclusion of all else. That means that anything that didn’t make it onto the list, will almost certainly remain unnoticed. Maybe we should all take a breath and slow down. Not only will we live longer, we will actually get more done!