CASE of LISTs
Rushing out of the house, throwing the house keys in purse, running to garage, opening the garage, running back to get the car keys, running down and rushing the car through the myriads of traffic Mustering the biggest of the will power of not cursing through the traffic ,fumbling for the phone in purse , checking on the nanny whether she reached with the baby to the nursery and then calling husband to remind of the weekend” get-away “ being planned since 8 months .
Finally getting into the office building, finding your “allotted” parking slot has already been taken by the NEW VP MARKETING with fancy car and not –so-fancy resume. Huh… never mind. Some people are born great and some people have greatness imposed on them and of course “you are the one who earns greatness” . Dismiss, some other day to revive philosophical musings. If this was not disheartening enough, you saw beaming Audi A6 standing next to it signifying your humorous Boss (jokes strictly funny to him) has reached office before you. Some other day...some other time.
Go to the paid parking, park the car and tug along with the purse, laptop, fresh salad bags, protein shakes, i-pad, kindle, and extra storage to the cubicle….sigh of relief!
One phase of getting to the office WON. What is life other than small victories like this strung together or is it!
Combing the hair while the emails (mini bombs ready to explode, err…) are downloading, friendly chotu gives your special elaichi tea and you sip along till the next phase of the email war starts.
Sound familiar?
Leaving aside few morning power routine driven ninja warriors of the corporate world, we mortals have a very haphazard, chaotic and reactive morning schedule where one small emergency (no milk for tea in morning …) to large emergency like kid missing the school bus not to mention school is at exactly 180 degrees from your 25 Kms office drive that too navigating the morning traffic ,puts us in the “catch- up" mode.
Given the schedule is unpredictable and many things may go wrong. If nothing else, then murphy will strike you by blowing the car tyres. There are other things like people’s demands on time, energy etc and economy troughs and peaks which cause us to derail in doing our mundane activities. If you are anything like me, I get a very sinking feeling at the end of the day. The whole Covey paradigm goes for a toss and I am left with a feeling that nothing of consequence was achieved throughout the day.
Assuming everything remains the same, same pressures, same family , same car, same boss (!), similar economy, what is one thing which we all can do that will bring more semblance and sanity to our daily routine rather than reactive mode wherein the brain is ever split in processing unlimited cues and stimuli and goes on the overdrive of semi-performance throughout the day.
LIST – Ta da! yes the innocuous LIST as lovingly advised by my ninja warrior friend !
LIST sounds so simplistic that I was wary of giving it a try. Just listing down the things to be done under different headings like work, house errands, grocery, listing the weekend getaway destination .Coming from the “ never give up” school of thought , I committed to give 100 % try to LISTs, When I started LISTing, the long-term thinker I am, I got pulled into the technology and paper debate. Whether I should use my Ever note or use the plain paper or even use the “wasted” prints from my daily print quota. As if this much of a challenge was not enough to my pre-frontal cortex, I started questioning how lists will capture the priorities and the timing of the tasks. I spent another 4 weeks in this vicious cycle of deciding on the tool and its effectiveness without actually doing anything.
One day, when I missed the office parking, guest parking, vendor parking and the road-side parking too (is there special slot for “woman who are late but have potential” parking) I decided enough is enough. I took out bunch of tissue paper (who all women in India will agree is best invention after telephone), I scribbled my project to-do, weekend errands and my weekly cooking list.
Instant nirvana!!
(Well instant reminds me of noodles but of late with leaden consequences so dropped)
Complete Nirvana!
How light I felt without shedding a pound ,how clearer was my thinking , how deeply I enjoyed my cappuccino at the desk while email was downloading as I knew what project I needed to tackle first, and, unlike the other instant thing, the benefits of lists and priorities are still building daily ( 4 weeks now!!)
Simplistic, No-brainer idea but as they say the mettle of any idea is in the execution. Try it for yourself .
If nothing else, you will certainly find a productive way of utilizing the tissue mountain in your purse or drawer .
Image source :
Sales and Marketing Professional
9 年As if you've articulated my feelings!! I've just started daily "To-Do" List on post-its. What a relief it is to see the check mark put against the accomplished tasks at the EOD. Long term "To-Do" List is yet to find its space in my notebook though. What's with the "living in the moment" thing that I am so used to!