Somewhere along the timeline of my life, I became seriously addicted to my to-do list. It started early, but my to-do list has guided and dictated my life for so long, I can't even actually remember when I started using to-do lists. I'm sure they started as jotted notes here and there, and at some point I decided I needed to house the scraps in one central location which bore the dawning of the age of the Daytimer. I started with a smallish version, maybe 4x6 in size, but as I documented more and more of my to-do's from probably university classes to waitressing shifts to when I was going to fit in my grocery shopping, I needed something bigger.
More room to scratch notes and reminders and shifts I needed to book off for one thing or another.
So I graduated to a black, artificial-leather 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 book-style daytimer that I lugged around for I betcha over a decade. Items I needed to shop for, dinner dates with friends, classes I was signed up for and people I needed to call were all scribbled in. I became more and more dependent on my organizer; if it wasn't written down, it would surely be forgotten. My brain seemed only able to retain a finite amount of information and I was (and still is) one who likes to jam a whole bunch of varied information into my world, so when the cup runneth over, I needed a holding tank to catch the spillage. That was my daytimer.
Then came the dawning of the age of the Palm Pilot. A precursor to the BlackBerry, folks I worked with started carrying them, but I was a devout adherent to my paper-daytimer modus operandi. I liked being able to crack the spine and see an entire week-at-a-glance, a bird's eye view of what was on the agenda for that week. Too little white space meant new appointments and engagements would have to wait until a later date; too much white space and I'd fill it up. Truthfully, I don't think I've seen anything resembling ANY white space on my daytimer pages in far, far too long. But the more I wrote into it, the more I was realistically exceeding my capacity for how much can physically be accomplished in one day. And organizational fiend that I am, I'd have to re-write all the stuff I didn't get done one week onto the pages of the following week's daytimer schedule, lest those items too would be forgotten in the overflowing cup that was my mind.
Eventually, the constant re-writing from one week to the next of "unfinished business" became tedious, so I adopted a new accessory in my daytimer (aka my Binder of Life): the mini-Post-It note. I'd write stuff I had to do on these colourful little scraps of self-adhesive paper, and just move and re-post them to different days, different weeks as was fitting. It worked quite well and saved me tonnes of re-writing time, but another difficulty ensued when I had so many things to-do, the Post-Its would overlap one another and often I couldn't even read all I had to do without lifting, shifting and re-posting my Post-Its. Appointments to keep, phone calls to make, letters and emails to write; it all was taking up quite a bit of room.
By this time we were well into the 21st century, and I felt more and more old fashioned as BlackBerrys dominated the belt loops and purses and backpacks of men and women and teenagers alike. The temptation of being able to drag-and-drop or click-and-change the dates and times of my multiple to-do's, rather than writing and re-writing, or Post-It-ing and re-Post-It-ing was enormous, but I still struggled with how I was going to manage not seeing my entire week's schedule in one fell glance.
At last, fuelled by the desire to save the planet (by using less Post-It papers) and the desire to carry a smaller purse (one that didn't have to house my giant heavy black faux-leather Binder of Life), and with the opportunity to get a BlackBerry at a wicked deal, I succumbed to the movement of the times. I made the switch from paper to electronic organization system....and I've never looked back. I quickly became just as addicted to my hand-held gadget as I'd been to the organizer that took an entire arm to carry, and I'm still ruled by my now-electronic to-do lists.
Mind you, I AM the one who's creating the to-do lists, so it's not the lists that rule me; it's really me that rules me. That rules how busy I choose to be; how many people and experiences and tasks I can cram into one day; how bent- or not bent-out-of-shape I'm going to get when, once again, I don't even come close to finishing the to-do list I'd crafted for myself that day.
All I can say is thank goodness for that miniature roller ball that helps me click, drag, drop and reschedule. I can take some comfort in the fact that I'm doing my part to save the planet: one less Post-It note at a time.
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