Why you need a ‘To Discuss’ list

If you’re familiar with Agile methodology, you’re probably good friends with kanban boards. As a quick refresher, a kanban board is a simple chart to help visualize the workflow for a project. At its most basic, a kanban board has three columns: To Do, Doing, Done. All tasks associated with a project start in the To Do column, and gradually make their way across to the Done column.

Georgetown University Professor Cal Newport is a big fan of the kanban board. He has several boards for the different roles in his life. He has a board for his writing, his computer science research, his university administration work, and for his role as the Director of Graduate Studies. I also like to secretly imagine that he uses one to keep track of household chores at home with his kids (although if I were to apply this to my own home life with my daughter, I suspect that ‘tidy up bedroom’ would rarely make it to the Done column).

While using kanban boards for individual project management is not a novel idea (Google ‘personal kanban’ for inspiration), what I found most interesting were the task categorisations Newport uses. For Newport’s role as Director of Graduate Studies, which involves coordinating between, and talking to, lots of different people, he has a column labelled To Discuss.

‘I realised I could save a tonne of email communication through having a To Discuss column,’ Newport explained to me. Every time Newport had something he needed to ask his department chair or program administrator or anyone else he was working with, he resisted the urge to just shoot off an email in that moment. Instead, he listed the topic for discussion on his board.

Newport ended up creating To Discuss columns for several people with whom he frequently needed to talk through important issues. Then, whenever he was next meeting with them, he was able to plough through the topics for discussion swiftly and resolve them instantly – a much wiser and more efficient use of time. ‘This probably saved me many dozens of unscheduled emails per week by just waiting until I got to those next meetings. So it was a great productivity saver for that particular role.’

Now, you might be reading this and thinking, ‘But it’s so much more convenient to just fire off an email’, especially if the matter is urgent. However, Newport argues that we overestimate what urgent actually means.

Utilising a To Discuss column will help you keep track of what you need to ask other people, as well as removing the impulse to send emails that feel urgent but in fact create more work and don’t actually get you closer to resolving issues.

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Put it into action:

1. Create a new section on your to-do list called To Discuss. Alternatively, if you are a fan of kanban boards, add a To Discuss column alongside To Do, Doing, and Done. You might even set up several different To Discuss lists based on all the people you communicate with frequently.

2. Take out your To Discuss list when you are meeting with the person and work through everything on the list. If you don’t have a meeting scheduled, wait until you have a few items on your list before booking a meeting together.