Lists really are not my thing. Until recently, the last serious list I made was to prioritize the things that needed to be done with this house. The top portion of the list was for things that needed to be done “this year,” which was 2002. The bottom portion of the list was for those tasks I figured could wait until “next year.” A year or two ago, I happened across that list as I was searching for something else, and it is completely and utterly comical.
A couple of weeks ago I decided to give list making another go. The reason for this is that over the past several months I have felt like my work projects are slowly but surely becoming unmanageable. I feel like I’m racing from one thing to another without ever truly focusing on any one specific thing. I’m making mistakes that should not be made, and there is less breathing room between the time I finish something and the time at which it is due, which cuts into my ability to carefully read through documents before I send them. I usually shut my office down sometime between 5 and 5:30 in the afternoon, and I noticed that more often than not the experience of watching my computer screen go black had ceased to be a relief and was becoming, instead, another source of anxiety. I wasn’t thinking of the things I’d accomplished during the day. I was thinking of what I’d missed.
So one Wednesday night, on the back of an envelope in which a credit card offer had been mailed to me, I wrote down the four things I wanted to accomplish the following day. My list was deliriously simple. I needed to write a blog post about how to transfer the contents of one PC to another, write the final section of an article about developing applications for mobile devices, rewrite the tips and tricks section of an article I’d written about professional networking in continuing education classes and write two of the five executive biographies for a client that’s a local technology reseller and customizer. On paper, I don’t have that much to do. I don’t have an overwhelming volume of what the cool people call “deliverables.” In fact, it’s almost embarrassing how little I have going on at any one time.
What was most beneficial about the list was that it served to turn the work portion of my day completely off when it was over. There are many things I like to do in the evening, and I am absolutely intolerant and inflexible about interruptions, especially work-related interruptions, even if they’re only in the form of wondering if I did this or that or having a little spell of panic as I contemplate what needs to be accomplished the following day.
Contrary to what has evidently become the standard way of doing business, I refuse to check mail during my off hours. I don’t synch the shit to my cell phone because (a) I do not have a cell phone and (b) that sort of blind flinging of things far and wide and letting them land where they may, with or without a clear purpose, breeds inefficiency. It took me nearly a decade to draw these lines in permanent ink, and I am sticking to them. First and foremost, sending mail around in the middle of the night and from airports and while driving to the coast gives those to whom they’re being sent the impression – rightly so – that you’re available around the clock. And from there the logical conclusion is never far behind: If you’re available around the clock, everyone should be. Number two, it’s the mark of a person with zero capacity to differentiate and prioritize one thing from another: When everything is deemed urgent, the result is that nothing truly is. And number three, it demonstrates that you either are incapable of completing what’s expected of you during business hours or completely disorganized. Either way, people who consistently send things back and forth at 10:47 p.m. either need to hire someone to help out or find a new job.
The least beneficial part of the list is that I discovered – by making check marks beside an item on the list each time I needed to tend to it – that there is always one thing that derails the day. And it’s usually the smallest, or seemingly smallest, item on the list. And we return to it over and over and over again because each time we craft and send responses and edits and one thing and another at the speed of lightening, we do so, alas, in a way that’s more mistake than solution. To my horror, the PR people I work with and with whom I’ve discussed this call it being “super responsive.” I call it super sloppy.
