To-do lists can be very helpful for informing how you should be directing your time and cognitive resources, i think where challenges emerge is when people treat to-do lists like wish lists, rather than the things they definitely want to do today.

Jordan Etkin

To-do lists are interesting because they sometimes become commitments. Once you write an activity or goal down on a piece of paper, it's work undone.

The more things people put on their lists, the more open they are to creating goal conflict and its sort of negative downstream effects.