Features

My father said, watching me at work my senior year in college, “I am spending what is arguably a young fortune on your education. It looks to me like what they are teaching you is how to make lists.”

That and other things. I submit to you that a person who can’t make a list doesn’t have any idea what they are doing.

On the other hand, my husband and I were watching a old movie, One Fine Day, about two newly-divorced singles and how they coped with child-care, etc. It was a totally preposterous plot but funny. However, the mother-architect in the show had lists which made me think of myself, or how I worked for many years.

There was the list. There was the back-up plan in case the task on the big list did not work out as expected. Then there was a back-up for the back-up. I was about to turn red. It was really embarrassing. How did I have any friends? For that matter, how did I still have a spouse?

Not to worry.

“Oh…so that’s what you were doing with all those lists. I never knew. It all seemed to work out,” he said, obliviously.(Then again, he benefited from so many items on the list, he definitely has a conflict of interest in this matter.)

Which is the whole point of being a great list-maker. Somehow, most of the time, more things work out than don’t because you have your list.

I still make lists but I no longer have double back-up plans. I no longer explain my lists to anyone. On a great day, no one even knows what is on my list. I am trying to pass for normal now. I think it’s working out but it is hard to live down the list-maker reputation among those who know you too well.

Below is a great feature story on why we love lists.

After reading it, you, too, may go pro in list-making. Just don’t get so tense. It isn’t necessary. And don’t watch One Fine Day, either. You could get a little spooked about how list-makers look to non-list makers. I did and I am already reformed.

—CC

NPR

….”Enough organization, enough lists and we think we can control the uncontrollable,” observed a character on the TV show House. By now you would think there are enough lists. But still we keep jotting things down in an orderly fashion.

“Why do we love lists? Let us count the ways.”

Source: NPR, February 25, 2009