No Time to do a To-Do List?

If I hear another person say to me, ‘You have to work smarter not harder’, I may loose the plot. It’s the sort of consultant speak, sound bite that wrankles to the core of my bone marrow. This is not just because everyone uses it; it’s become a consultant's karaoke song, like 'Imagineering' or 'lean manufacturing' or 'just in time'. Urgh! The simple act of just writing the phrase down gives me that squirmy, goose bumps feeling. Because, as a piece of advice, it is sooo utterly useless.

If I was smarter I wouldn’t have to work harder now would I?

I’d love the time to get myself 'smarter'. To be ultra efficient, successful, smug. It can’t be that hard. I mean look at my dingbat competitor down the road. He's running his business yet plays golf everyday and picking up his kids from school and was in the bottom set for maths!

‘What you need’, the life coaches and mentors tell us,’ is to take control of your 'to do' list’. It’s a start I suppose, and I take their point but I am a little bewildered. For a start exactly which list are they talking about here?

I have a few.

Is it the one I have on my Windows Outlook on my laptop that I started in that fog-bound European airport departure lounge in a fit of organisational sobriety while I had nothing better to do? Would this be the very same task list that I’ve forgotten to update or delete the items I actually did remember to do, that pops up with those annoying reminders every time I open my e-mail?

Or, perhaps they mean the list on that piece of paper in the hole thingy in the car door where you put stuff so it doesn’t disappear into the foot well while your testing your ABS. Under the sticky stack of car parking tickets?

Or, possibly, is it the list stuck under the magnet on the fridge beneath the pizza delivery number and the invitation to a swimming party. (Please excuse me while I go off at a tangent here. Those invites often say ‘Adults are welcome'.….welcome to do what exactly? To turn an interesting shade of pale blue and stand around catching verrucas’ in last year's all too snug swimsuit, trying not to stare at cleavage or cesarean scars while you try to suck it in to the point of hyperventilation - Mental note to self. Book tanning session at gym before aforesaid party. That January induced membership should be used for something. Better put it on the to-do list).

There must be some better way of organising our lives. If we can put man on the Moon and crash a beagle into Mars surely we can have bash at some personal organisation?

Frankly, I’ve got no tips to offer personally. I could try to delude myself that I am some sort of guru or practitioner in the art of time management. But numerous editors and colleagues will gleefully attest to by deficiencies in this area. Frankly, and I can say this from behind the sofa of anxiety attacks, that finding this article on my to do list was a bit of a surprise and completing it almost a Herculaneum task. Whenever, by some chance of devien intervention, I do actually remember what the knot in my handkerchief was actually tied to remind me to do, I have to lie down in a dark room with a wet towel on my head to recover from the shock.

But, I know a man, or in this case a women, (why isn’t that so surprising?) who really knows about this stuff. She is one of those adorable American woman who can run a law case in three cities, solve a murder, referee her kid's softball game and figure out how to print out her spreadsheets so that they fit on just one piece of paper yet maintain readability without optical aids, all on the same day. And then, to add insult to injury, she even has the time to share with us, on her life coaching blog site, her daily dose of assertiveness training and motivational adrenalin while casually throwing in the fact that she has today, as well as qualifying as an airline pilot, won the high-school moms home baked cookies competition. She is Oprah on speed…

So I asked Melissa.

Melissa’s number one tip is to actually use paper, don’t make digital to-do lists on your computer or electronic devices. Slighlty radical and before I get the tree conservationists rounding on me, and rightly so, I probably will need to remind the readers that even though they, and they know who I am talking about here, will probably input all the relevant information into the Hogwarts of their hard disk. They will then, more likely than not, probably print this list out anyway. This will take up three lines on a piece of A4 paper, hiding pitifully in one corner. Then they will fold it in half and stick it in their filofax or under a pile of papers and loose it. The paperless office is just a mirage. (Interesting side note here. Just read a pamphlet on the paperless office. Did the irony get lost somewhere?).

The advantage of using paper is that you may also use both sides, which will probably be really useful as you have run out paper anyway as you didn’t put ‘getting more printer paper’ on your to do list.

The technophiliacs amongst us, may well be using a spreadsheet to help you with managing this list. Now this is fine but, if this is the case, my advice to you is that you and your Excel should really be getting out more often. I used to work at a company (in fact most of them) where Excel prowess was seen as some sort of light sabre for the Jedi management classes, where management peer respect was gained by your manipulative skills of spreadsheet dynamics. It was not uncommon to see a 'droop' (my collective noun) of managers peering intently over a screen of grids with numbers in hushed conversations about what the benefits of a ‘pivot table’ in this application could be. (See, I know the jargon at least)

But that’s another story, for another time. The whole point of paper to me is that it is so.. err …substantial. There is something oddly alluring in experiencing the pleasure of scribbling in the margin and that thoroughly satisfying feeling you get when crossing something off the list. It is the same feeling you get when watching the Sunday afternoon films after your mum’s Sunday dinner and the dishwasher is on its cycle. I know it's pathetic, but these are small battles won.

Somehow, if it is on paper, you feel you own it, it's personal. Digital is antiseptic. Not quite there. Maybe it one of these left side, right side brain things, a psychologist somewhere will undoubtedly have a word for it. It's like your pump bag at school; it may be embarrassing but it is yours and if anyone nicks it you will cry. If you ‘own’ it, you are more likely to take an interest in it and actually do something about it.

M’s next world shattering tip knocked me bandy. To be honest she was on a roll and there were several she mentioned actually but I want to build up the excitement. She asked me to ask myself, or indeed you, this question. Should the item even be on your to do list? Does it actually need to be done? What would happen if you didn’t do it? Would the sky fall on your head? Should somebody else be doing it? If not, why not?

I felt a wave of feng shui flow through my nether regions. Here was a new personal mantra. I was aligned! And then she gave me a new chant. Only ever put three things on your to do list. Wow there, mister! Three? Really? But, she added, keep two lists; I knew there was a catch.

Apparently you have to have two lists, one in the back of your filonotethingybook, and one in the front. You move things to the front only when they have to be done. Now this is radical stuff. But it actually makes sense. I can cope with about three things at a time, anymore and I get sidetracked and end up not finishing anything. I can hear the sound of heads being slapped across the Kingdom. There is nothing common about common sense is there? We just need to be reminded about it once in while. Pity it has to be by an American;-)

My friend also told me to tell you that if you do something for 21 days you will develop the action into a habit. For most of us getting past 21 minutes is tough enough. There are so many more interesting things to distract us. Like the satellite remote control or putting the kettle on. Not necessarily to make a drink, just putingt it on and forget you have.

By now light bulbs were popping on in my head like a deserted fairground and a kid with a catapult and grudge but we haven’t finished yet.

Don’t open your e-mail box before you look at the to-do list. E-mail and to do lists are non-compatible. Like olive oil and gravel. Didn’t Bill and his buddies realise this when they wrote Outlook. It has become some unwritten law, but one I’ve never actually seen it in any operations manual, that the reading and the replyment thereof of the new e-mails of the day shall take preference over all life processes in the Universe, even it is only from your mate discussing the lamentable merits of Leeds United FC’s 4:3:3 system. As soon as you hit your mail in-box your intentions to tackle your tasks, keenly honed on the commute to work, are gone like a leaf on the breeze. Take a deep breath and be brave! The World will not collapse into a black hole if you don’t look at your e-mails for ten minutes. Honest Injun!

Finally, two gems Melissa thought we should share in the spirit of sharing and caring as her 'Blogyourwaytolove' web site puts it.

Firstly, prioritise the list, even the three things you have on it. OK, so that is pretty obvious but some tasks are always much more important, relatively. An air traffic controller’s to do list- example, item 3. Must get the other plane to change altitude and course in the next er.. five seconds, has a smidgen more urgency than say, putting together a budget for indoor plant decorations.

How to prioritise though? That’s easy. Number one priority every time, is the completion of task on the list that is going to make my boss look good? After that, really just take a pin.

Mel's last tip was how to deal with the big items that sometimes appear, hysterically, the week before you go on holiday. For example, the complete, new interactive catalogue for a brand new e-commerce site in fourteen languages that the MD wants to launch at the sales conference in two weeks. Piece of cake!!!

Before we go into M’s solution I just wanted to flag up this Alert! More consultspeak. You may well have been already wooed with the idea that you ‘should break these big projects into smaller projects; that you really can ‘eat an elephant, if you do it one piece at a time’ or that ‘epic journeys start with one step’. OK, that’s fine I get that. The fact is though that you will still have to eat some pretty unsavoury bits of an elephant that, frankly, make the bush-tucker trials look like a picnic. So, and I agree with Melissa here, you should be thinking of ways to make the unsavoury bits more user friendly. Maybe share that task with a friend or colleague. Or better still, delegate.

The 'Pass-the-Buck' technique only works, of course, if there is actually somebody to delegate to. You may well be looking down from your heady heights at a ' responsibility vacuum'. The clue for you here that this strategy won’t work for you is when you realise that you don’t actually have to appraise anybody yourself. No leverage!

Or, you could try to do it in a different way, in another environment. Like brainstorming at Starbucks and wash it down with a Caramel Machiatto to get rid of the taste.

Speaking of which, that reminds me, I notice that beverage replenishment is fast approaching on my mental to do list. Now if I could only find my filofax, make sure my Ipad is charged up and my Iphone is synced I’ll be in complete control of my appointments, contacts and list and able to work on the run. I’ll be off but before I do I will leave you to ponder this.

In the words of Melissa. ‘The knot in the hanky of life is there to simply to remind you. It won’t do it for you. Getting your thumb from out of your arse will always help’. Thanks Melissa. Hold on a sec, was she talking about me? Must add doing a to-do list on to my to -do list.