From the Editor’s Desk: To Don’t (Premium)

Every once in a while, I come across a formalized description of something I've just been doing already, and it's always a nice bit of affirmation. And so it was a few weeks ago when I saw an article (that I can annoyingly no longer find) about creating a "to-don't" list instead of a to-do list.

No, not literally: an actual to-don't list is a ridiculous idea. But the idea here is that we spend a lot of time focusing on the positive things we can change or accomplish in our lives, be it a to-do list, a New Year's resolution, or whatever. But it is equally useful to be mindful of what you don't want to do or want to avoid. That is, this year, I'm not going to do ... something. Whatever it may be.

I like this because I stumbled upon the value of thinking like this a long time ago. If you've read enough of these Monday morning missives, you may recall that I have horrible parents and that it was a revelation to me when I met my future wife's parents and realized that one could treat their own children like adults. In my wife's parents, I found a positive example, a "to-do" for parenting. But my experience with my own parents was equally useful and informative as a "to-don't" for parenting. There are good and bad examples, and you can learn from both. And I did.

I've also learned from interacting with some of you that many of these lessons are specific to the individual. For example, as a long-time traveler, I've honed my habits around packing and how I travel when flying, and I have a very specific way of doing things. Among them is the notion of traveling light which, among other things, dictates that I will never check a bag. For me, this "to-do" of traveling is reinforced every time I go anywhere. And on those few occasions in my life when I was forced to check a bag, how doing that was likewise a "to-don't" of frustration and wasted time.

Others feel differently. We have friends who travel at least as much as we do, and they have gone on some incredibly adventurous trips, and they very much prefer bringing many more things with them when they travel, and so they check their bags every time. To me, this is a wrong-headed focus on the "what if" of travel, as in I have to bring an umbrella, because what if it rains. But to them, checking bags and potentially not having something they might need is stressful. As stressful to them as waiting for a bag at an airport is to me. To each their own.

But that's sort of the point: as our experience with anything grows, the habits we develop are comprised of both positive ("to-do") and negative ("to-don't") learnings, and both impact us equally.

I was thinking about this when Microsoft announced its AI-based Bing chatbot a few months ago and Yusuf Mehdi, intriguingly, used the example of using AI to create a five-day itinerary for Mexico City, a place in which my wife and I have invested an enormous amount of time and money. And so I've used this same example in my own experiments ...