Every weekday morning I make a to-do list for work tasks, and every
morning I make a to-do list for personal tasks. On weekdays, I am lucky
if I get to check off two of my work tasks; and I am extremely lucky if
I manage to take a break and tackle any of my personal tasks. On
weekends, I usually complete three or four personal tasks each day. As
to week days, my job is driven by reaction. While I am expected to do
project-oriented work, I am also expected to drop everything to analyze a
possible security incident. My work days are never dull.
That said, I really don't want to talk about 'work'. I want to talk about lists.
Probably
soon after I learned to write, I found myself making lists. I think
it's a sign of a low-grade OCD thing. I like to organize things. Which
is actually quite humorous since I tend to make cluttery piles. (I do
that a lot less than I used to.) I must have subconsciously decided to
go with that whole organizing thing when I found myself going to
graduate school to become a librarian. I even worked my way through the
program by cataloging books at the University of Pennsylvania. I
really liked assigning subject headings and call numbers to items.
Twisted, right?
At home, I typically organized my own
growing book collection. Non-fiction was grouped by topic. Fiction
was alphabetized by author. My music, whether it be on vinyl, cassette
or CD, was always organized by artist and then album title. Eventually
my movie collection was shelved by title. And, lest we forget, my
spices were typically alphabetized as well.
I don't do
this with everything I own. But, it does give me a wonderfully warm
feeling to have certain collections of things organized by a discernible
system of sorts.
Back to 'lists'. Not only do I find
myself making to-do lists. There are the everyday grocery lists that
everyone makes. Then there are also the lists of places I want to visit
before I die, household projects I want to work on, packing lists for
various types of trips, books I want to read, playlists, groups of
movies that would make great double/triple/quadruple features, and so on
and so on.
A few years ago I discovered this wonderful personal digital organizing tool called
Evernote.
This tool is a list makers dream. Not only can I keep track of all
sorts of important pieces of digital data, in various subject-oriented
notebooks, but I can organize all those lists that I like to make. I
use it for a bunch more things as well (saving web pages for future
reference, scanning documents into it, etc.) Highly recommended means
of organizing your digital and digitized resources.
A few years ago I picked up a fun book that I like to randomly dive into every now and then.
to-do list by Sasha Cagen is a collection of lists with an introduction by the people who made them. While it may not sound like much, there are some truly amusing lists in the collection. Some examples include "Adult Movie Props", "Drinking and Running", "Sayings to Live By", and "To Start A New Church".
If the idea of that book amuses you, stick around. I plan to start sharing lists of things that come to my mind from time to time. Some will be totally mundane, some will be silly, and some will probably be grumpy or offensive. Hey, we all have 'those' days, right?
"And so it goes." - Kurt Vonnegut
