Uticopa Blog

We live in a world where today's women are expected to juggle so many roles. I'm reminded of that circus act where someone tries to keep twelve plates spinning at one time, constantly needing to race back each time another plate starts to weaken.  But for men too, life can be exasperating in its demands.

Today's man needs to fulfil far different roles than yesteryear - whether it be the need to take paternity leave, or that ever-demanding IT job and the stress of failure. In many ways, the strain on our mental health has never been so great.  

I wonder if this is why so many people have forced themselves to make ‘to do' lists- ever-fearful of forgetting something important in the stresses of everyday living. What does your ‘to-do list' reveal about you?  Sensible planner or time-waster? Or, maybe you've never made one at all, preferring to live your life unplanned, exactly as it happens, which would reveal even more!

Whilst a wardrobe shows how you present your body to the world, a to-do list opens up a window into your mind.  In effect, it provides an unedited snapshot of your life. At any one moment, not only does it reveal your preference for Earl Grey tea, it also reveals your subliminal goals as well as your inner anxieties. This is because your list is completely unedited, not designed for public consumption. So, by definition, it provides what US writer Sasha Cagen calls ‘everyday voyeurism or low-budget reality culture, but without the artifice'.

But, does a to-do list just talk about the present? Well, no. Lists not only speak volumes about you, they also act as portals to the past.  If I could look back at one of my own to-do lists from the ‘50s, it might have said something like:  ‘get my shoes soled and heeled at Timpson's, write thank-you note to Grandma for the ten-shilling note'.  Hidden within these few words are a wholly different culture.  The ‘50s were still a time when one had to make do and mend, and a reminder of the forgotten art of writing thank-you notes.

One way to help clear your mind from all those conflicting jobs to be done is to use a different coloured pen to represent the different voices in your head.  For people like myself who suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affectation Disorder), a good way is to use green ink for positive thoughts, and blue to show depressed feelings. There are even some people who actually strive to preserve their image of dysfunction by deliberately jotting things down on the back of old envelopes, rather than on shiny new pages of pristine paper. Conversely, those who insist on keeping things obsessively neat and orderly, might make multiple lists every day, rewriting them so they look neater.  How many of us can remember childhood games of throwing a ball against a wall and inventing continuous reasons why the slightest fault meant that you needed to start right back at the beginning again? Images of obsessive compulsive disorder loom large in all of this.

Dr. Timothy Pychyl, professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, believes that all these things are merely a reflection of the human condition, conflating the mundane with the magnificent. But, there is no doubt that lists can point to an unhealthy mental state when used to satisfy a need for excessive control. Procrastinators make themselves feel better by making lists, says Dr. Pychyl, being driven on by anxiety. But, by putting the worst task right at the top of the list can help our self-confidence enormously when we've actually finished it and can get on with the more pleasant things we have to do.

Either way, there is no doubt that our everyday lists are coded messages. By decoding them, we discover not only the inner thought-processes of our mind and the way we organise our daily lives, but for historians they are witting testimony to the culture of the day.

Never think, though, that you have to complete absolutely everything on your list. The day our list is completed is the day we die!