Many days seem to bring 1__________ tasks and responsibilities, all of which apparently must be tracked right away. You spend a day 2_________fires, but by the end of the day, you haven't accomplished any of the really important things you set out to do. In desperation, you draft a "to-do" list. But most days, you can 3_____with it. When you look at the list each morning, a big fat cloud of 4__________ is right at the top---those difficult, complex, important tasks that are so 5__________ to get done and so easy to avoid. Plenty of us create a "to-do" list to address feelings of being 6___________, but we rarely use these tools to their best effect. They 7______ being guilt-provoking reminders of the fact that we are 8__________, and losing control of our priorities. According to Timothy Pickle, a professor of psychology at Carlton University in Ottawa, people often draw up a "to-do" list and then that's it. The list itself becomes the day's 9______, allowing us to feel we've done something useful without taking on any real work. In fact, drawing up the list becomes a way of avoiding the work itself. "Too often, the list is seen as the accomplishment for the day, reducing the immediate guilt of not working on the tasks 10___________ by investigating energy in the list," says Pickle, "When a list is used like this, it's simply another way in which we lie to ourselves."