A List of Lists

In Today's Corporate Culture (TCC), it is said that making lists is the sign of a well-organized person. The thinking seems to be that, in doing so, one acknowledges the defects of memory (darn, that capricious creature!) and, instead, writes everything down. If this is so, I must be the most well-organized person in the world. Because I make lists for everything!

Not only do I list everything I intend to do in a day, I list every person I intend to call, every item I need to buy at the store on the way home, every other errand I must run before I arrive there and every chore I would like to do once I get in the door. After all this is done, I can sit back, take a break and look at the newspaper. After all, I've just done a huge chunk of work. But have I accomplished anything? Of course! Look at all my lists!

Honestly, I have several problems with lists. And the idea of making lists, for that matter.

Okay, in theory, list-making is a wonderful organizational tool. But why is it that I never seem to accomplish all the things on my list in the allotted time? If I were a less confident person I might believe I had a terminal defect in my planning capabilities. Or ,is it that (as my mother used to say) there just aren't enough hours in the day? No matter how short my list, or how easy the tasks, I seem incapable of completing everything on them. I am tempted to make a list of nothing is see if this still holds true. Can one do less than nothing? While I'd like to try it, I usually have too much to do to actually test it out. So much in fact... that I must make a list.

What if I put that on my list?

The scary part is that I not only make lists at work, but at home as well. I list the items I must order from catalogs, the things that I would like to see fixed around the house, the shops I would like to visit, as well as all the details (sub-lists) of each repair or renovation I would like to see happen. I call these fantasy lists.

But the real fantasy list is the ‘honey-do' list -- the one I give my husband. That one has been sitting on the kitchen table, growing as consistently as my 10-year-old daughter. Neither ever grows shorter. Isn't that strange? You'd think one would opt to either stop growing or shorten, just to be different. My daughter poo-poohs the idea: She's not going to grow shorter. Neither, apparently, is that ‘honey-do' list.

But the biggest problem I have with these lists is that there are so many of them. I have at least three note pads at the kitchen table, four at my desk, a stack on the computer and... God help me if I lose one! Or, if the list runs longer than one page -- what then? If I turn to the next page, I know I'll forget that the previous one exists, never mind what I put on it. Hoo-boy.

I am seriously thinking of beginning a master list. I will call it my List Of Lists. Similar to a filing system, I could keep track of all the lists floating around. It would consist of the contents of the list and its approximate location.

By the time I have all these lists organized it should be, oh, about time to make dinner.