Da Vinci was known for his notebooks. He was always carrying them around and would draw anything he saw as useful and jot down notes of things he wanted to know and/or discover. According to one journal entry, he believed that it was “useful to constantly observe, note and consider.”

In one of those notebooks, dating back to the 1490’s, was an epic to-do list of things he wanted to accomplish in the next few weeks to month. Translated by a journalist for NPR, these are things that popped into his brain and he just decided that they needed to be accomplished asap.