The Checklist Illusion

The quiet comfort of ticked boxes

I’m a hard-core planner. The illusion of order soothes me.

Clean notebooks, labelled folders, colour-coded tabs – they promise that life can be organised if only I try hard enough. Nothing gives me a greater sense of control than a well-made list.

My mornings begin with ambition disguised as stationery: the to-do list.

It looks innocent enough – black ink, clean lines, good intentions. Send invoice. Write essay. Buy detergent. It fills me with a small, caffeinated thrill to start the day. Within a few hours though, it’s no longer a to-do list; it’s a self-improvement manifesto. Fix neck pain. See doctor. Don’t miss workout. Change life.

I stare at it like it’s a boss I secretly resent. It stares back, knowing it owns me.

There’s something addictive about that first tick – a declaration of order in an otherwise disorderly world. It’s clean, final, satisfying. For a second, chaos seems negotiable. The list gives shape to the invisible: all the errands, decisions, and small obligations that hold a life together. It whispers, you can do this… just start at the top.

And for a while, I believe it.

I tick boxes, cross lines, move tasks to the next day, underline some twice. It’s a dance between realism and optimism; a choreography of small lies told with perfect handwriting.

But the thrill of ticking a box lasts exactly six seconds. Then I notice the forty-seven others still blank, blinking like unclosed tabs in my head, humming with quiet disapproval.

By afternoon, the list has evolved. It now includes things I never wrote: Reorganise house. Rewire brain. Take backup of last backup. Reply to person who replied to your reply. I don’t write them down, but somehow, they’re implied… like fine print in the contract of adulthood.

By 7 pm, half the list remains untouched – each task a small fossil of who I thought I’d become by now. Still pending.

And yet, lists have their grace. There’s a reason why we love them. They save us from the tyranny of fading memory, from the clutter that spills out when we try to hold the world in our little heads.

Atul Gawande once wrote that checklists save lives in operating rooms because they turn chaos into sequence. A surgeon can’t rely on inspiration; neither, perhaps, can the rest of us. Lists tether the drifting mind. They remind us that progress doesn’t always require brilliance – sometimes, it just needs a checkbox and a pen.

But even grace has its limits. They begin as helpers, then turn into silent auditors of all that didn’t get done. It’s a rolling performance review conducted by your own future self.

Sometimes I wonder who we’d be without them. Would our days dissolve into chaos? Would we forget how to function? Would our memory collectively crash? Or would we finally do things for the pleasure of doing them, not for the satisfaction of striking them out?

I tried it once – a list-free day. No agenda, no tasks, no plan.

By noon, I felt free.
By 2 pm, unmoored.
By 4 pm, I was writing “relax” on a Post-it just so I could tick it off.

Turns out, I don’t need lists for structure. I need them for comfort – for the illusion that life can be itemised, managed, held together by check boxes.

And maybe that’s fine. Maybe the list isn’t an enemy but a mirror that shows us what we’re avoiding. And maybe the list isn’t supposed to end at all. Maybe it’s just an ongoing conversation with the future – a way of saying, I’m still here. Still attempting coherence.

So I tell myself I’ll finish it tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I’ll wake up early.
Tomorrow, I’ll prioritise better.
Tomorrow, I’ll be the kind of person who finishes things.

Tomorrow, of course, I’ll write a new list. As I will, each day for the rest of my life.

I’ll carry forward what I didn’t do, add a few things I might, and pretend again that catching up with life is possible. I’ll feed it small, digestible things: Water plant. Write pitch. Walk more.

And on good days, when a few small boxes get ticked, it’ll be enough. Because, for that brief, merciful moment, the world will feel manageable.

After all, some days, making the list is apparently the only thing that ever truly gets done.