To-Do it Like Da Vinci

A To-Doom List

I have a bittersweet relationship with To-Do lists.

On the one hand, how else would I remember to pick up some milk and cereal on the way home, buy that birthday card, or pick up that stuff for the kids?  And how could I possibly get any work done without that list of tasks that need to be completed each morning, afternoon, evening, and week?

On the other hand, the very thought of my To-Doom lists (as I prefer to call them) will often invoke a little bit of anxiety in me. I should look forward to the sense of satisfaction of finishing something, but the very nature of the Doom list is that there will always be the next thing on the list to do.

The truth is that as much as I know that To-Do lists are necessary to manage my life and work, I also find them to be a burden I would rather live without.

Da Vinci’s To-Do List

So when I came across an article last week about the great Leonardo Da Vinci’s own To-Do list, I was more curious than excited.

It is well-documented how Da Vinci would carry around a notebook with him so he could write and draw things that interested him.  In one of those notebooks, c.1490, is a To-Do list like no other.

Robert Krulwich, who wrote that article I mentioned, had it translated:

• [Calculate] the measurement of Milan and Suburbs
• [Find] a book that treats of Milan and its churches, which is to be had at the stationer’s on the way to Cordusio
• [Discover] the measurement of Corte Vecchio (the courtyard in the duke’s palace).
• Get the master of arithmetic to show you how to square a triangle.
• [Talk to] Giannino, the Bombardier, re. the means by which the tower of Ferrara is walled without loopholes (no one really knows what Da Vinci meant by this)
• Ask Benedetto Potinari (A Florentine Merchant) by what means they go on ice in Flanders
• Draw Milan
• Ask Maestro Antonio how mortars are positioned on bastions by day or night.
• [Examine] the Crossbow of Mastro Giannetto
• Find a master of hydraulics and get him to tell you how to repair a lock, canal and mill in the Lombard manner
• [Ask about] the measurement of the sun promised me by Maestro Giovanni Francese
• Try toget Vitolone (the medieval author of a text on optics), which is in the Library at Pavia, which deals with the mathematic.

This really is an illuminating To-Do list. Look at all those words in bold:  Calculate, find, ask, get, examine, discover, draw, try to get… These are certainly not words you will find on my Doom lists.

Inside the Mind of Da Vinci

I am not sure what I was expecting to see on Da Vinci’s To-Do list (other than his genius), but it is obvious from his list that the thing that he wants to do more than anything else is to satiate his unbounded thirst for knowledge.

We always make the assumption that genius folk know everything already.  But of course, that’s not how it works – they have to accumulate their genius.  And so it makes sense to me why so many of the ‘to-dos’ on his list involve Da Vinci getting experts to teach him something, to inspire him, or to challenge him.

Da Vinci is known as one of the most enlightened people to have walked the globe, but it strikes me that he is also quite possibly the most curious.

I need to be more like that.

A Curiosity List

I do not imagine that I will suddenly start To-Do lists that challenge me to draw Milan or work out the measurement of the Sun.

But I would like to take a cue from Da Vinci.

Not everything that I want To-Do has to be related to managing my work and life.    In fact, I can now see how being more intentional about how I might introduce a Curiosity list to my life could be inspiring – and provide a neat counterpoint to that damned Doom list.

Perhaps I can find someone to ask…

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