lists

I am a list person, for good reason. In a world without lists, I would regularly come home from the grocery without the main ingredient, library books would remain forever checked out, and I would never make another meeting for the rest of my life.

Staying on-task would be an impossibility. I would endlessly drift from one thing to another, like so: 1. start at desk, organizing and planning day (think LIST); 2. find document that must be filled out/sent in immediately; 3. head to study to get vital info for document; 4. along way, find dirty dishes and take downstairs to kitchen; 5. start doing dishes; 6. halfway through head upstairs to laundry room for clean dish towels; 7. in laundry room fold clothes and take to baby girl’s room; 8. straighten room/make bed/find cat in a lump under covers; 9. take cat downstairs to see cool new cat toy found at mall; 10. find Diet Coke can and take to recycling bin; 11. take recyclables outside to garage; 12. find discarded shirt and wonder how it got to garage; 13. on way back inside with shirt find self in garden pulling weeds; 14. Goldens bark at walker with dogs, prompting brain to remember that ‘walking every day’ is on a list somewhere; 15. head in and up to find tennies; 16. see document that must be filled out.

Just realized I was describing yesterday. hmmm. Obviously I did not take list with me when leaving desk.

I’ve often thought of hanging a little chalkboard around my neck. On it I would write my primary goal of the moment. That way, when I found myself organizing the pantry at one in the afternoon, I could look at the chalkboard and see that there was a job upstairs, awaiting my attention. Maybe I would even remember to grab lunch from the pantry before heading off… especially if ‘get lunch’ was written on my hand. Yeah, that would do it.