Less Taxing To Do Lists: A Self-Justification

I have a quirky way of making to do lists. As you’d expect, I include all the complicated things I need to get done by breaking them down into simpler steps. But I also make sure to include super-basic items that take almost no effort, as well as a few that I’ve already completed and can check off without actually doing anything. For some reason, the list looks less daunting this way.

Here’s an example. I’ve been slogging through my taxes over the past couple of weeks, and I made a point of writing in really easy items along with all the important complicated stuff. Things like gathering up the W-2 forms that came in the mail from our employers and creating the pile of tax-related receipts I will eventually need to deal with. I even gave myself kudos for filling out the cover page of a tax organizer from the accountant we work with. Of course there are other to do items that make my brain sputter and fizzle. (Itemizing? Ack!)

Lani finds the odd mélange in my to do lists amusing, but now I’ve found some scientific backup. It even has a fancy, scientific-sounding name. It’s called the endowed progress effect.

The basic idea is that people are more likely to complete a multi-part set of tasks if they think of the set as partially finished. The most celebrated example came from a clever pair of business school professors who experimented with a loyalty program for an urban car wash. One group of customers received a "buy eight, get one free" card. A second group received a "buy 10, get one free" card with the first two validations already in place, so again they needed eight washes to get a free one. The second group of customers were much more likely to complete all eight washes than the first group (34% compared with 19%), and the second group of customers also completed their washes much more quickly. The takeaway is that some initial progress creates a sense of accomplishment, confidence, or momentum even when it’s built on a sort of slight of hand.

That's valuable knowledge for the variety of marketers out there peddling frequent filer miles, loyalty cards for coffee drinkers, and the like. And it's a great justification for how I write my to do lists.