The To-Do List Page 4

  Luckily I didn’t take Forster’s book to Oxfam along with Claire’s Davina DVDs and her Mr Motivator box set, but retained it for use in possible future emergencies just like this one. But of course I had to find it first.

  I began the search in the living room because that’s where we keep most of our books. Like many young couples who prefer people not to think they spend their evenings watching property programmes or yelling at the characters on EastEnders, we owned a lot of books that we liked to keep on display. There were upwards of a couple of hundred of them in the living room alone and others scattered at various locations around the house. The clever-clever stuff (Zola, Dickens, Carver, etc.) and feminist stuff belonged solely to Claire; the occasional smart modern stuff (Smith, Amis, Eggers, etc.) along with the stuff that seemed more than a little bit random (an original copy of Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask, The Collected Andy Capp and Gary Wilmot’s Guide to Doing Impressions) were mine; and finally the Lonely Planet and Rough Guides that gave the impression we were a well-travelled cosmopolitan couple (South Africa, Russia, Crete, Thailand and the USA) were jointly ours.

  The problem with this many books was that if you wanted a specific tome and hadn’t organised them into some kind of order (Item 818. ‘Organise book shelves so that you can find a specific book without looking through everything’) you were pretty much stuffed.

  I started with the main shelf above the stereo but it wasn’t there nor on the ones by the French doors; I checked the three IKEA shelves in our bedroom but it wasn’t there nor in Lydia’s room (she had been known to pluck a random book off the shelf in order to spend an entire afternoon pretending that she was reading The Collected Works of Aphra Behn); finally I headed up to the office/spare room and checked out the books stacked against the wall by the sofa bed and the ones piled on the wonky IKEA Lack shelving. No luck. About to give up, I racked my brains to remember where I’d had it last and began to see disconnected images of me in a tidying frenzy some months earlier when I’d grabbed a bunch of stuff that had been sitting on the floor at my feet and tossed it into a box before ceremonially dumping it in . . . the under-eaves storage space.

  Twenty minutes later with half of the contents of the storage cupboard once again strewn around the room, I finally found what I was looking for.

  ‘Time is what our lives are made of’, said the blurb on the back of the book, ‘and yet our failure to use time properly can have disastrous effects on our happiness and sense of well-being. This book is written for everyone who has to juggle different demands in a busy schedule, including advice on finding an effective system while making allowances for human psychology and the unexpected.’

  It was hard to believe how right this book was for me given my situation. I called Claire upstairs and read her the blurb.

  ‘Get Everything Done is a book written for everyone who has to juggle different demands in a busy schedule,’ I said pointing to the relevant part of the blurb. ‘See that? A book for me.’

  ‘That’s great,’ said Claire. ‘Now all you have to do is read it.’

  Good point. This book was only going to work for me if I actually read it but I hadn’t got the time to read it so I was a bit stuck.

  I woke up my computer and typed Mark Forster’s name into Google hoping to find an audio version of Get Everything Done so I could multi task. Instead I found something far more useful: the author’s email address. Within minutes I was composing a message to him:

  Dear Mr Forster

  My name’s Mike Gayle and I’ve got a list of 1,277 things I need to do before my next birthday. I was wondering whether you might be free at some point quite soon to have a chat in person about what I’m attempting to do.

  Cheers

  Mike Gayle

  ‘Do you think he’ll reply?’ Claire was reading the message over my shoulder.

  ‘I’m hoping so.’ I turned over the book and examined his author photo. He looked cheery, the sort of man that you’d definitely trust with your car keys. ‘He certainly looks like the sort of man who would write back.’

  ‘So, are you going to carry on with the List in the meantime?’

  ‘No way. I’m on a roll so my plan is to use my time wisely and head off right now for a chat with another, more local, expert but one whose field is more organisational. And I’ll give you a clue: she’s Canadian, married with two kids under three, and easily, hands down, the most organised person we know.’

  It was just after eight by the time I arrived at Alexa’s. After ushering me into her front room, she headed off to get us some coffee while I looked around, wearing different eyes from the ones I had worn here on previous occasions. Suddenly everything spoke of Alexa’s organisational skills. The books were all in alphabetical order with the bottom shelf reserved for oversized books. I wondered idly if Alexa (whose postgraduate degree had been in Librarianship) had also made miniature library tickets for them all; on the table next to the sofa, fanned out in a decorative fashion that you might find in an upmarket hairdressers, were half a dozen magazines: Martha Stewart’s Living, Oprah Winfrey’s O, Canadian Living, Canadian Interiors, Patchwork Monthly and Red; in the corner of the room were three pairs of shoes all lined up in ascending size from left to right. This was a woman who knew about being organised. This was a woman who would definitely be able to assist me on my mission to conquer the List.

  ‘So come on then,’ she said, cradling her coffee as she leaned back in her armchair. ‘You were very cryptic on the phone. What exactly can I do to help you?’

  ‘Well, you know that list? The one with the 1,277 things on it? Well, I’ve sort of run into trouble and I need advice about how to be organised and given that you’re the most organised person I know . . .’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that exactly . . .’

  ‘I would. I bet if I went into your loft right now I wouldn’t find half a cast-iron fireplace, would I?’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ replied Alexa, baffled. ‘Would I find one in yours?’

  I raised my eyebrows in a show of guilt. ‘All I’m trying to demonstrate is that you’re organised. I bet you even know exactly where your birth certificate is.’

  ‘Top left-hand drawer of the sideboard in the dining room.’

  ‘And how about last year’s tax return?’

  ‘In a box file underneath my side of the bed.’

  ‘And what about . . .?’ I struggled to find something obscure, ‘. . . I know, what about . . . a pen? We can never find a pen for love nor money in our house. So come on, Alexa, show me a pen.’

  She plucked one from the shelf behind my head and handed it to me.

  ‘I got sick of not being able to find a pen when I wanted one so once a week, usually on a Tuesday, I go around every room and leave pens at pre-designated pen-dropping spots. I know it’s not normal behaviour but it makes me happy.’

  ‘You see?’ I wanted to offer her a round of applause. ‘This is why I’ve come here tonight. Because you can do stuff like this. So come on, Alexa, what’s your secret? What’s the secret of being a proper grown-up?’

  Like any guru worth their money Alexa took a moment to consider her answer. ‘For me,’ she began, ‘the real secret is routine. For instance I always stick the kid’s lunch bags in the same places. And I always put them out before we go to bed and have everything organised the night before so that when I’m on auto-pilot in the morning I don’t have to think.’

  ‘Right,’ I said wondering how to apply this theory to the List. ‘Use routine.’

  Alexa grinned as though she’d read my mind. ‘I’m guessing that for your list the key thing will be making sure that you get into the routine of doing things every day.’ She took a sip of her coffee and looked guilty. ‘Since we’re talking lists, I will tell you something that I don’t tell many people because they’d laugh at me: I make To-Do Lists all the time and sometimes when I’m feeling particularly low I put things like “Take a shower” just to ha
ve the satisfaction of ticking it off. It’s my kick-start for the day.’

  ‘So you’re saying I should make sure not to do all the easy stuff straight away? Otherwise I’ll have used all of my kick starts?’

  ‘Exactly. When you’ve got as many things as you have, you’ve got to pace yourself. In fact I would break them up into the things that you’re excited about and the things that you’re not so excited about and then alternate them so there’s always something to look forward to. It’s like eating your pudding before your tea. If you do, there’s no incentive to eat your tea.’

  ‘Food metaphors – now you’re talking my language. Though I have to admit between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five before I met Claire I regularly ate my pudding before my tea.’

  ‘Not one for delayed gratification then?’

  ‘This is probably where I’ve fallen down these past few years.’

  ‘Well, you’re going to have to get that sorted pronto, my friend, because getting things done is all about delayed gratification. Put the work in now for a pay-off in the future.’

  Feeling like a soldier on the front line after a stirring motivational speech from my general I rose to my feet and just about stopped myself from giving her a salute.

  ‘Thanks, I feel really inspired.’

  Alexa nodded sagely. ‘That’s good but remember to pace yourself.’

  ‘What are you doing now? Sorting out your sock drawers or some such?’

  ‘No, it’s knitting club tonight.’

  I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. Alexa was no longer a general, she was back to being my wife’s super-organized, constantly baking, Oprah-loving best friend and figure of fun.

  ‘You’re going to knitting club?’ I scoffed. ‘Isn’t the first rule of knitting club not to talk about knitting club?’

  ‘Like I haven’t heard that a million times! It’s just me and some mom friends. I’m knitting a cardigan. We talk about all kinds of interesting things. You should try it some time.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ I replied. ‘Me in a knitting club?’

  When I got home I checked my emails and found the following message:

  Dear Mike

  Thanks for your email, and I’d be very pleased to help you with this. It sounds a fascinating idea. Presumably you’re thinking in terms of a phone conversation? If so, when’s a good time for you to talk?

  Best wishes,

  Mark Forster

  The Time Freedom Coach

  I couldn’t believe it. Mark Forster, a man so skilled in Time Management that he referred to himself not as a Time Freedom Coach but The Time Freedom Coach had agreed to talk to me! I suddenly pictured myself doing all my normal work, spending half an hour a day demolishing the List in small but efficient nuggets of time and then taking the afternoon off to do the things I really like doing like falling asleep in front of the TV. This wasn’t just good news. This was the best news ever. I typed a reply straight away:

  Dear Mark,

  Thank you for your speedy reply. I was actually thinking of coming to see you but then it occurred to me that given that you’re The Time Freedom Coach in Chichester and I’m a writer in Birmingham, that probably wouldn’t be a particularly useful way of making the maximum possible use of the time available to either of us! How about we speak at your earliest convenience?

  Best wishes

  Mike Gayle

  Moments later:

  Dear Mike

  I’ve put you down for tomorrow at 10am. If another time would be better for you, please let me know, though I can’t do earlier than that.

  Best wishes,

  Mark

  Things were really starting to come together.

  ‘A lot of it is to do with imposing order on chaos,’ said Mark on the phone the following morning. ‘Life is pretty chaotic but if you make a list it’s imposing order on life. I tell people who feel overwhelmed that the first step is just to sit and write everything down: it helps you calm down and see what action you need to take. That said, amongst my students and the people I work with I have to admit that I don’t actually encourage the use of To-Do Lists.’

  I was horrified.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘What I do instead is encourage people to have a closed list, by which I mean a list of things that you are actually going to do. If it’s done properly that can be used to control the amount of work they take on in a day because most people take on more than they could ever hope of dealing with properly.’

  ‘Like me and my 1,277 things?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ laughed Mark. ‘What you need to do is balance the work coming in with the work you’re actually doing.’

  It was a good point but it wasn’t much help to me, given that I’d already taken on more than I could ever hope to deal with properly.

  He sensed my disquiet. ‘The thing is, Mike, a To-Do List should not be the be all and end all. You need a life beyond the list. You need to be wary of becoming so list-bound that you lose all creativity. I encourage people to put on their list to “think” about things and “explore” so that the list is creative in itself.’

  I checked to see if I’d actually written down anything at all about ‘thinking’ or ‘exploring’.

  I hadn’t.

  Resigning myself to doing my ‘thinking’ and ‘exploring’, in my own time without the benefit of a tick earned, I persuaded Mark to open up more about his theories on time management before finally quizzing him about the one demon I most needed to conquer if I was ever going to succeed: Procrastination.

  ‘The thing is,’ I began, ‘I feel like procrastination is my number-one enemy – my Achilles heel and the one thing most likely to scupper my mission. As one of life’s chief procrastinators, how can I hope to overcome it for good?’

  ‘That’s a good question,’ chuckled Mark. ‘I’ve found you don’t need to procrastinate when you’re on top of things. The example I always use is washing dishes. If you leave the dishes unwashed for a month you’ll be resistant to doing them but if you wash up immediately after every meal then you will be less resistant.’

  ‘That’s great,’ I said, ‘but my list, to use your analogy, is actually a very, very big pile of washing-up. It’s probably the equivalent of having not washed a single dish for a good three or four years.’

  ‘Looks like you’re out of luck then!’

  I really had thrown myself in at the deep end by attempting to tackle the List. In a bid to try to end our conversation on a high I asked one final question that I hoped would send me off feeling refreshed and focused.

  ‘If there was one single thing I could do that would help to achieve my goal what would it be?’

  ‘That’s easy. The best thing is to tell every single person you know what you’re doing so that you commit yourself fully to the project.’

  ‘Like for instance sending out a mass email to your entire address book explaining how you’re going to complete a 1,277-item To-Do List?’

  ‘Yes, that might work.’

  I didn’t have the heart to tell Mark that I’d already tried this.

  ‘Anything else you can think of? Any final words of wisdom?’

  Mark mulled the question over for a few moments. ‘Well, there is one thing . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Try picking some buddies to help you along the way, so you are accountable to them for getting this list done.’

  ‘How about a bunch of layabouts and n’eer-do-wells in a pub in Moseley?’

  ‘Will they keep you on the straight and narrow?’

  ‘I reckon they’ll have a go.’

  ‘Then they sound like exactly the sort of people you’ll need.’

  ‘So the list is back on?’ asked Kaytee as I revealed my big news to the Sunday Night Pub Club the following weekend. ‘I didn’t know it had stopped.’

  ‘It didn’t. I just paused it while I gathered my thoughts properly.’

  ‘That’s brilliant, I’m really chuffed fo
r you.’

  ‘You see, I spoke to a Time Management bloke recently and he said I should get you in as cheerleaders.’

  ‘Do we get uniforms and pom-poms?’ asked Steve.

  ‘You can have whatever you want, but right now we need to work out the rules.’

  The exact rules for tackling the list had been on my mind for some time. For instance, there were things that are easy to define as being crossed off, for example Item 399: ‘Tell Mum that I love her.’ But at what point exactly would Item 70: ‘Lose weight’, be crossed off? After I’d lost one pound? Or eight? And given that I now had 1,260 things left to do and roughly nine months in which to do them, that equated to roughly 4.5 things every single day, even if I didn’t take a single day off between now and my birthday (a big if), wouldn’t I be tempted to give up if I got behind? After all, 4.5 things is fine if they are all to do with tidying drawers or painting woodwork but if one of those things happens to be Item 655: ‘Digitise the best of your old mix tapes’ or Item 1006: ‘Build something out of wood for Lydia’, then I was going to be pretty much stuffed.

  One hour, two rounds, and a diversionary conversation based on the question: ‘If you could wear one celebrity’s head on your shoulders for a whole day whose would you choose and why?’ we finally came up with the following set of rules for tackling the To-Do List.

  1. Everything on the List must be attempted at least once.

  2. To allow a greater degree of flexibility a ninety-nine-per-cent tick rate or above will be considered a success.