What To Do?

I am a list maker, and I mean a real list maker. Real list makers almost always have a ‘to do’ list going, if not on paper, certainly in their heads. Those who occasionally jot things down are not list makers; they are forgetful and need reminding.

People have been making ‘to do’ lists for thousands of years. Crude representations on cave walls of bison hunts and camp fires are not attempts to tell stories, but a way of reminding early humans that first you hunt, then you kill, then you build a fire and cook. Likewise I’m sure there have been many other misinterpretations – hieroglyphics on a papyrus thought to mean “…in the summer of the third year of the reign of the boy pharaoh the gods blessed us with rain and we enjoyed a great harvest. We defeated our enemy, enslaved the strong ones and sacrificed the young and weak ones” could have actually said “…buy a slave (strong one from the last successful battle), sacrifice a 3-year old to the Pharaoh, water the plants and go to the market.” I have no scientific basis for this conjecture, but it seems plausible to me, even without bullet points.

As a list maker I delight in the completion of a task primarily because I get to strike it off my list. It is an earned moment, a joyful stroke of the pen. I love it so much that I sometimes add things that I’ve already done to my list and then immediately strike them off. I know that’s stupid, but I crave that sense of accomplishment so much that, like any other addict, I just can’t help myself.

For a person who makes a lot of lists, I’m not very organized. I usually have several lists going, none of them comprehensive and all in different places. At any given time I probably have a scrap of paper in my back pocket, a small yellow pad at home, a wedge of 2”x4” in the basement and a chunk of cardboard in the car, all covered in my block letter handwriting outlining the things I need to do in either agonizing minutiae or Herculean weight. Even worse, I often forget to look at them after they are made. List making for me is more of a pathological habit than a useful organizational tool.

My list might look something like this:
1. Shower
2. Coffee
3. Paint house
4. Decide on a career
5. Be a better person
a. Lose weight
b. Stop telling linear stories with too much detail – it bores people
c. Find a therapist
6. Stop making lists

Clearly, this is a form of mental illness. But does the Betty Ford clinic have a rehab plan for this addiction? How about a 12 step program, or does the enumerated format preclude the possibility? Is there an anti-list making drug available? If there is, I haven’t seen the commercial, but I can imagine there would be many potential side effects. They would probably include: twitching, constipation, headaches, weight loss, confusion and memory loss.

And of course, listlessness.