????人人都知道，要完成一個冗長復雜的任務清單，最好的方法就是計劃好每個任務的每個步驟。對吧？但如果你真的這么去做，結果卻往往適得其反。請別難過，這其實是正常的。

????埃米?多爾頓在香港科技大學教授營銷學，她告訴我們：“盡管動機很好，但大多數的目標最終都沒有實現。”她與加州大學洛杉磯分校安德森管理學院的助理教授斯蒂芬?斯皮勒開展了一系列研究，試圖找出這一現象背后的原因。

????完整的研究結果將發表在《消費者研究雜志》的10月刊上，題目為“物極必反：從完成意愿中獲益取決于目標的數量”。

????他們發現，如果你的任務清單里只有一個大目標，計劃周詳會很有幫助。然而，清單越長，專門計劃的用處就越小。

????“如果今天你有六件事要做，而且都很要緊，那么你坐下來開始安排每件事的細節時，就會很快意識到完成所有任務有多么困難。”多爾頓解釋道：“你覺得難以應付，既然做不到，你就泄了氣，沒干勁了。相反的，那些并未制定詳細計劃的人會更相信自己能完成任務。”

????這里就可以引用亨利?福特的格言了：“如果你覺得你做不到，你是對的；如果你覺得你做得到，你也是對的。”為了避免因為過度分析而喪失行動力，多爾頓建議：“只對最重要的目標制定詳細計劃。”對其它事情，就像某鞋廠的招牌口號：just do it（只管去做）。

????不過多爾頓和斯皮勒還發現：一旦相信了其他人正面臨更多麻煩，即使自己也任務繁重，我們反而不會受到計劃的羈絆。多爾頓說：“如果你知道其他人要干的活更多，你就不那么容易被自己的計劃嚇倒了。”這一現象的原因還不那么清楚，但也可能僅僅是想和鄰居，或者辦公室隔壁小間的同事比一比的人類天性。

????是否從事某些職業的人士更容易完成其任務清單呢？最近LinkedIn的調查給出了答案：是。在6500名專業人士中，83%的從事農業的受訪者自稱能完成每天的任務清單，比例最高。而律師該比例最低，僅有66%。其他人士的得分都在兩者之間。令人欣慰的是：沒有哪個職業組能得滿分。

????Everybody knows that the best way to accomplish a long, complicated list of goals is to plan each step of every task -- right? But if you've taken that approach and found that, the more detailed your plans, the less you actually got done, cheer up: It seems that's normal.

????"Despite good intentions, most goals go unfulfilled," says Amy Dalton, who teaches marketing at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She and Stephen Spiller, an assistant professor of marketing at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, teamed up on a series of studies to find out why that is.

????The full research results will be published in a study called "Too Much of a Good Thing: The Benefits of Implementation Intentions Depend on the Number of Goals,"set to appear in the October issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

????Turns out, detailed planning works quite well if you have just one big item on your to-do list. The longer your list, however, the less useful it is to make your plans too specific.

????"If you have six things to do today, all high priority, and you sit down and start planning everything out in detail, you quickly realize how difficult it will be to do it all," Dalton explains. "You feel overwhelmed and, because you don't think you can pull it all off, you're less committed. By contrast, people who don't form specific plans are more likely to believe they can achieve it all."

????Here Henry Ford's famous dictum kicks in. "If you think you can't, you're right," he said. "If you think you can, you're right." To avoid paralysis by analysis, Dalton suggests, "save the detailed planning only for your most important goal." For everything else, as a certain sneaker company's slogan says, just do it.

????One odd twist: Dalton and Spiller found that many of us can avoid tripping over our own plans even with multiple goals -- as long as we are led to believe that peers have even more on their plates. "People who think that others have more to do than they do are less overwhelmed by their plans," Dalton says. Why that should be so is not clear, but it may simply be human nature to try to keep up with Joneses -- or with the guy in the next cubicle.

????Are people in some jobs more likely to finish their to-do lists than others? A recent LinkedIn survey of 6,500 professionals around the world suggests so. Poll respondents in the agriculture industry ranked highest: 83% said they usually get their entire daily to-do list done. Attorneys scored lowest, at 66%. Everybody else in the survey fell somewhere in between. An encouraging thought: No occupational group claimed a 100% score.