Storytelling with Your Lists

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BONUS FREEBIE: Want even more ways to stay organized, productive and less stressed? Click here to get access to my List-Making Starter Kit. It will boost your efficiency and get you back to doing more of the things you love.

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Journaling is great and a way to check-in with yourself. But if you’re too shy to journal or just not into the idea, you might already be doing a version of it without even realizing!

Your lists can tell so much about you.?

Lists can tell you where you’re going, what you’re doing, how much you have left to do, if you need milk, etc. And also what’s on your mind, how your day went, and where your head is at. It’s all in the details.

Here are three books I love that are built using lists.

1) More Than a Grocery List

An artsy guy named Bill Keaggy collected a bunch of grocery lists in his blog and book, “Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found.” People from all over sent in their lists or ones that they found and the results were pretty telling. There were normal grocery items like milk and eggs.? But some offer strange combinations like the one that includes hair detangler and Prozac. Bill’s commentary always makes me laugh.? Check it out for a chuckle.

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2) A Life in Lists

Another curator of lists is Karen Rizzo. No relation but we must be long lost cousins or something.? We both share a love of lists as a way of organizing thoughts. Her book, “Things to Bring, S#!T to Do… and other inventories of anxiety” is a really fun read. It tells all the ups and downs of her life through her to-do lists. Why didn’t I think of that? I’ve tried to reach out to her to tell her I love her book but I can’t seem to find her — if anyone does, please send her my way.

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3) Short Story is Really a List

Yet another smart cookie is using a list to tell a story. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jennifer Egan wrote a piece for the Guardian called “To Do,” which is a short story disguised as a list. In about 300 words she tells a sinister story that people with short attention spans can love.

Your lists can be introspective, functional, fun, happy, sad, creative or even pointless. I love to hold on to my old lists and look back at what I was doing and what mattered at the time. Take a look at your own lists and let me know what you find!

Pay attention to your own lists. They may be telling you more than what you forgot at the grocery store!

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BONUS FREEBIE: Want even more ways to stay organized, productive and less stressed? Click here to get access to my List-Making Starter Kit. It will boost your efficiency and get you back to doing more of the things you love.

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