I make lists. It’s what I do. It is not unusual for me to wake in the middle of the night, my head buzzing with things that I would have otherwise forgotten. ‘Order serviettes. Do I need buckets? Count chairs.’ I scrabble for a pen and by the light of my iPhone I scratch out another list. Blessed are the list-makers. They will inherit the earth. They will inherit the earth because they would have put ‘save planet’ on their to-do list.
I think there are two sorts of people: people who write lists and people who live in unmitigated chaos. There is even a word for these slovenly people: listless. No wonder they are lacking energy and enthusiasm and suffer from spiritless indifference. They have no list.
Hall and Oates were on to it. They even made sure ‘your kiss was on my list’. While I’m a passionate list-maker, I tend not to list acts of passion on my to-do lists. ‘Kiss, bit of a through-the-clothes genital fondle, followed by awkward undressing and removing of shoes, delicious full-naked body contact, conclude with act of penetration. Orgasm.’ I don’t know, it seems a little overly officious. Although when I think about it, I have to admit, I really would enjoy a post-coital ticking off the boxes. Lying naked across the sheets with my pen out.
I like to tick the things I have done. Other people like to cross out. I find the crossing-out tends to obscure your acts of greatness. The point of making a list is so you can enjoy how much you get done. I’ve been self-employed for nearly 30 years. The list is how I ensure that I meet my performance outcomes. The Tick allows you to really appreciate the task you have achieved.
Sometimes I go back and look at old lists, and ‘carry over’ list items that may have slipped through my fascist regime. I make several lists a day. Sometimes a list item requires its own list. Kind of like a list that branches off from a list. I wouldn’t suggest people new to list-making start attempting these more complex listing manoeuvres.
I make a list for the week. Then I make a forward projection on another list of what has to be done within that month. Sometimes six months. And yes, I have a list for the year. That list is always the same. It usually says: ‘Do tax, update website, lose weight, get fit, put the pool in’. People with lists get shit done. Schindler had a list. God had a list – called it the ‘ten commandments’. Basically it was the guideline to effectively manage some sort of social cohesion so we weren’t coveting our neighbour’s ass. Or murdering people when they pissed us off. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is one of the all-time great list entries. Many governments around the world would do well to revisit that particular list item.
Comedians and musicians would be lost without the List. If you’ve ever found one of our ‘set lists’ you would think us insane. They generally have random entries like ‘sack my chef, Grafton, Big Prawn, Botox, Yoga, sex with strangers, picking up dog poo’. These are not the ramblings of a crazy person; this is merely a list of key words required to remind us what comes next.
Where you write your lists and how you write your lists is a personal taste. My friend Ellen goes for the whiteboard. There’s no mixed messages regarding what she’s up to each week. While I can see the benefits of the whiteboard – namely being the impressive public broadcast of one’s daily activity to the less active members of the household – I don’t like the rubbing-out. Honestly, there’s nothing more fulfilling than flipping my diary back to 1 January and re-reading my list entries. In fact, when I die, instead of a eulogy, I want someone to read out all of my totally done to-do lists.
I think list-making is genetic. My mum is such a prolific list-maker that she even makes lists for my dad. This is where she cleverly outsources the more unpleasant list items from her ‘to-do’ list to his. It says things like: ‘re-thatch Bali hut, build new deck, move 10 cubic tonnes of mulch’.
Mum then crosses out things on Bill’s list. It’s genius. She gets the joy of ticking off list items without having to actually perform the task at hand. I did feel a bit sorry for my dad though. I remember seeing him once holding his list, shaking his head. I said, ‘Come on, Bill, why don’t you write a list for her? Why don’t you just put “suck my cock” on it?’
I didn’t think he’d actually do it. So now he’s living in the shed. Which coincidentally only exists because it was on his list three weeks back.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
