Are to-do lists useful? Yes, but only if you actually work to mark off all the items on the list. Just drawing up a to-do list isn’t productive in itself and making unused lists all the time is a total time waster. Is doing laundry productive? Yes, but if you’re watch TV or otherwise waste time while you wait for the washing cycle to finish, then switch your clothes to the dryer and go back to wasting time, you were only productive while you actually started the washing machine and dryer -not the whole time the machines were running. Fortunately, Hello Giggles has a quite useful piece on identifying sneaky time wasters and how to eliminate these tasks from our daily routines.