The Trouble with Lists

I know a lot of people who make lists. They make lists for everything. I used to do it myself, but I have given it up. Now I just make signs. Signs are like lists, but signs are confined to one idea, one notion, one specific thing to keep in mind. Signs are useful. For instance I have a sign on the inside of my front door that I see whenever I decide to venture out into public. It is just one word: PANTS.

Lists on the other hand, create as many problems as they solve. The purpose of the lists is to prevent us from forgetting anything important. While lists are indeed good for just this thing, there are some important side effects of lists that ought to be considered before one embarks on a list-keeping adventure of one’s own. Lists are not the nostrum against forgetfulness one might hope for.

The 6 Worst Things about Lists:

1. The more one relies on lists, the more one needs them. Memory is not unlike a muscle. The adage, “use it or lose it” applies. The less you challenge your capacity to remember stuff, the weaker your memory will become. Lists are a crutch that you will not be able to chuck away when you are healed—the reason being that you are not going to be healed so long as you use the crutch. Instead you will become increasingly dependent. Consider the ubiquitous use of sanitizing hand cleaners. My wife washes her hands 40 or 50 times a day to keep from getting sick. Her immune system has pretty much shut down from lack of use. The result: when she is exposed to the puniest of bugs, she gets knocked down for days. If she challenged her immune system, took it out for a run occasionally in the infectious environs of, say, a pre-school, I think she would get sick less often So it is with memory. Better to challenge your memory by not writing anything down. That way, when you forget something of consequence, the fear of the consequence will motivate you to remember better next time. Consequences are true memory aids. Lists are not.
2. Lists expand to fill the space allotted, whether this space be the size of the piece of paper or the time that elapses between beginning the list and having to execute the items on it. The bigger the paper or the more time available, the bigger your list is going to grow. Lists are self-perpetuating. Our Thanksgiving menu now contains 127 dishes. New ones get added every time a new family member comes of age or someone gets married, but nothing ever comes off the list. We have to cook them all every year, even the ones nobody eats. Items on a list have a way of suggesting new items that are not yet on the list. The bigger the list grows, the easier it becomes to add new items. Before you know it, you will have so much stuff to do that you won’t be able to complete your list, either making it or performing it. You will then need to make a list of personal and social obligations that are going to suffer as a direct result of your having too much stuff to do on your lists. Eventually you will be crushed under the weight of your unfinished lists.
3. Lists are tyrannical. Once you put an item on a list, you have to do it. There is no escaping the stuff on the list. To cross off an uncompleted item is to admit your fundamental inadequacy. Bucket lists are the worst. Now that they’ve been popularized by a pretty good movie, every poor slob who passes on with an uncompleted bucket list dies unfulfilled and depressed. It’s much better to forget an item that is only logged in your memory. If you just don’t remember that you’re supposed to do something, there is no guilt or self-loathing associated with not doing it. What you don’t remember can’t hurt you. Not the same for an item on a list. It’s there on the list until you do it, mocking your inability to get it done, reaffirming your low self-esteem.
4. Lists get lost. This is not the same as forgetting something you have only recorded in your memory. If you forget something, it is gone from your consciousness and no longer has any power over you. True, the forgotten thing might come back to bite you on the ass in the future, but you don’t have to worry about that until it happens, if indeed it ever does. This is not the same as forgetting where you put your list. Forgetting where you put your list means you have to stop everything and find the list before you can get on with the items on the list. The list and the items on it still have power over your life. They will define your agenda (find the damn list) and your mood (foul) until you find it. Nothing else will get done. Forgetting an item that is not on a list is nature’s way of clearing your decks for peace and contentment. Forgetting where you put your list is a hell of your own devising.
5. Lists are indiscriminate. If you rely on your memory, your natural tendency is to hold on to the important things and let the unimportant ones slide. Your memory is a great judge of the relative importance of the things you have to do. Memory performs an organic triage on the chaos of your life. Lists on the other hand just record the chaos. Lists admit every stray thought you are able to write down. Lists do not make judgments. Every item on a list has the same permanence. Sure you can rank items on a list by their relative importance. You can color code them and arrange them into some sort or order. None of this carries any real weight though when it comes to performing the list. The insignificant items nag with the same persistence as the significant ones. You will perform three unimportant tasks to avoid having to do an important one, but by the time you get around to the important one a whole host of new trivia will have been added to the list. There is a reason for this. It’s easier to write stuff down than it is to do it. Making lists is easier than striking stuff off of them.
6. Lists give us a false sense of security. When you’ve reduced your life to lists you are convinced that you have gained some measure of control over it. The opposite is true. You have lost control. You are now at the mercy of your lists. Your lists are in charge of everything you think, say and do, and they are feeding on your energy. No wonder you can’t get anything done.

There is only one thing worse than being at the mercy of your lists, and that is being at the mercy of someone else’s.

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