Why Don’t People With ID Use “To-Do” Lists?
Art Dykstra, FAAIDD Cherry Hill Consulting Group
If you are reading this, you probably began your day putting together a to-do list. To-do lists help us feel organized and map out our priorities.
They help us remember what we need or want to do. Not having a to-do list sets us up to be at the mercy of other people’s lists. To-do lists make sense.
Let me ask a question of readers who work with people who have intellectual disability or are
stakeholders in the IDD system of supports. How many people with intellectual disability that you support, work with, or are your friends use to-do lists or other organizers? I have asked that question to a significantly large number of people working
in IDD systems and the most frequent answer, by far, is “none.”
No doubt there are other opinions on this; however, I suggest we consider the underlying personhood of having activities to organize and the agency of mapping out what needs to
be done. Perhaps simply engaging the people we support on their “to do” lists is a practical, focused, and relevant person-centered effort that can also increase our own insights into the things that are most important to them.