The Joy of Listing

Yeah, I know: Evan and my other east-of-center friends will be thinking “Yup, the woman lists to the left!” But that tendency notwithstanding, I’m here to testify to the endless benefits of making lists to organize your time and beat yourself into finishing those tasks you just. don’t. WANT. to. do.

By this morning I’d only just started to climb out of the hole I’d dug for myself by falling behind on a single regular chore: grading student papers. That slippage led to a cascade—an avalanche, we might say—of missed deadlines and stuff that wasn’t getting done. Last night I read copy until 2:00 a.m.; then overslept until 7:00 this morning, meaning I didn’t get breakfast before M’hijito showed up with pesky Charley the Puppy, which meant I didn’t get the pool backwashed or the plants watered or the dishes washed or this post written while there was still time to work in relative peace.

With that little bouncer underfoot, precious little gets done. And by now a vast lot needs to get done.

Well, after tying the end of Charley’s long lead to a doorknob, I figured I’d better get organized or nothing would get done: ever again! Hence, the disorganized organizer’s secret weapon: a list on a yellow pad:

√ Refill hummingbird feeders
Backwash pool
Test water
Adjust chemicals
Enter debits in personal and corporate books
√ Read the last straggling student paper
√ Water plants
√ Read new client’s chapter;
….√ Enter preliminary edits in two pages, timing the effort
….√ Write assessment, commentary, and estimate
….√ Compose agreement letter
….√ Send all of the above to him under cover of an e-mail
√ Write October ABPA newsletter
Write new CE Desk website copy
Update LinkedIn copy
√ Find out if there’s a LinkedIn badge that could go on new CE Desk website
Contact former client; ask advice on marketing
√ RSVP to networking opportunity
√ Remember to enter dog training appointment in calendar
Dust furniture
Clean floors
√ Write FaM copy

Well, of course I came nowhere near getting all those things done. In fact, only the items that absolutely positively HAD to get done got done.

For some reason, writing down the things you need to do does something to the brain. It weirdly  motivates you to perform, for reasons I don’t understand. Maybe the satisfaction of checking off yet another obnoxious chore—DONE!—releases just enough happy-chemicals into the brain to keep you going.

I can think of a thousand things I’d rather do than read another student paper. And I especially resent reading late papers, even if the kid has what looks like a legit excuse.

I am sick of watering plants.

I’ve already backwashed the pool twice this week, which is two times too many.

I never want to write the mind-numbing newsletter.

And the prospect of reading client copy (and constructing an agreement letter and writing an assessment that made sense) plus writing the newsletter was enough to send me off on a cruise aboard the Good Ship Google, a fugue that would guarantee the nonaccomplishment of all the above.

Tomorrow I have to teach all day, race home, feed the pup, bolt down dinner, and then shoot out the door to choir practice. So none of the other undone things on today’s list will get done. The gritty floors will continue to stain the bottoms of my feet gray. The books will fall further out of date. More bills will come in today’s and tomorrow’s mail and not be entered in said books. Cassie’s dust allergy will continue to make her eyes run. The Copyeditor’s Desk website will remain out of date. LinkedIn will remain out of date. The recently former client may shuffle off this mortal coil before I get in touch with him.

But at least the worst of today is done.

Mary Kay Ash wrote, in her long-ago autobiography, that listing was THE way she got herself organized and moving forward when she started her business. And, she said, she continued to write and follow lists throughout her formidable career.

She advised her acolytes to write the next day’s to-do list on the bathroom mirror, in lipstick.

Why not? Use the stuff as a marking pen, and you’ll buy all that much more Mary Kay lipstick!

Messy, but you can be sure it worked. It’s hard to ignore a to-do list that’s between you and your morning makeup. You have to see it as you stumble into the bathroom to use the terlet the first thing in the morning. What a reminder.

She also suggested putting the chore you least want to do at the top of the list. For her, it was cold-calling. Her theory was, once you got the don’t-wannas out of the way, the rest of the day would be downhill skiing.

And there certainly is something to that: I find I tend to put off all my chores when there’s some major don’t-wanna lurking. Because I don’t want to do that one thing, I don’t want to get started at all, because sooner or later I’ll have no choice but to face the aversive task. So I don’t do anything at all.

Organizing your tasks seems to organize your time, as if my magic. Automatically, so to speak. And now it’s 8:00 p.m. and I need to schedule this post to go online tomorrow ayem, fix something to eat, feed Cassie, finish reading the current ARC (author’s review copy–a type of page proof), and go to bed.

Tomorrow:

Backwash pool
Test water
Adjust chemicals
Enter debits in personal and corporate books
Write new CE Desk website copy
Update LinkedIn copy
Contact former client; ask advice on marketing
Dust furniture
Clean floors
Meet three classes
Go to choir
Read draft stoont papers before going to bed
Write FaM copy

Yeah. Sure.

🙄