This is just focusing on the list as an ends to itself. I have little doubt that a list is not capable of "working." However, the among the many different processes of creating and organizing a list, there are probably jewels that help a ton of people. Oddly, these processes will be widely different for many different people that all have similar artifacts. This is why some people will say "to-do lists work for me" while someone with almost an exact replica list will say "it just wasted my time."