I suspect of all of the things we have posted here since we began this essay may prove to be the most relatable. Because it tackles the dreaded to do list, a phenomenon that is absolutely rife in these busy, busy times. And
knows all about them.Poking fun at something from the outside can have its uses but real absurdity can only be truly highlighted by an insider, by someone who is well versed in the crazy-when-you-step-back-and-look-at-it practice in question. Which is what we have for you today. And as always Terry’s wit and humour and eye for the vagaries of everyday life are on full display.
Enjoy.
TJB.
My to-do list is getting out of hand. Partly because I keep adding stuff without deleting anything, it is now (this is so embarrassing) thirty-nine pages long. This is not my lifetime bucket list. It is not my "goals to achieve in the next five years" list. No. This is my daily task list, all thirty-nine pages of it. I know I’m a quick worker, but even so….
Look, I don't regard lofty ambitions as necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps a modicum of realism is needed too. I think part of the problem is using a digital app, like Google Keep or Google Docs. These are good because you can have checkboxes which, when you click in them, not only insert a tick but also put a line through the corresponding text. But they're also bad for the simple reason that they are not limited as far as space is concerned. Well, perhaps once my to-do list reaches a few hundred thousand pages I will receive a warning of some sort, but that volume of tasks is highly unlikely, even for me.
As a more achievable approach I've tried adding the most urgent stuff, the stuff that I really would like to do today, at the top of the list. I've even resorted to using red text with yellow highlighting, for the purpose of visually separating the must-do list from the wish list, but to no avail. I insist on saying to myself, “Perhaps I should just add this very small task….”.
In desperation, I once took to using a pre-printed notebook called a daily planner. This had only (only!) twenty check boxes down the side. What did I do? I drew a line down the middle so that I could fit forty in. There really is no hope for me: I’m a to-do-listophile, collecting tasks just like books are collected by bibliophiles. (I’m one of them as well.)
Interestingly, when I first started teaching I hit upon what I thought was a brilliant idea for tackling the sort of workload that senior teachers delight in imposing on those below them in the pecking order. I mean things like a request to complete a form saying how many red biros you’ve used in the past week. I found that if you ignore it, in seventy percent of the cases it never gets picked up on. As for the other thirty percent, if necessary I’d just make up the number.
In one of my jobs, every teacher in the area received a survey from the Local Authority, the responses to which would supposedly be anonymous, asking what position you held. I put down that I was a headteacher, and upon speaking to colleagues I discovered that many of them had done the same. We were eagerly awaiting a report which stated that 97% of teachers in the area ran the schools they were in. Funnily enough, we heard no more about it.
In a local authority job I had, we were suddenly instructed to complete a timesheet at the end of each week itemising what we’d done each hour of the week and how much time we’d spent doing it. I created a spreadsheet that spouted out random times on a template resembling the timesheet pro forma. That reduced the time taken on this thankless task from ninety minutes to ninety seconds. Unfortunately, I could never quite pluck up the courage to use it, even though I was almost certain that nobody on high ever looked at these timesheets anyway. How else would you explain the fact that I once accidentally put down that I’d been in two schools at the same time, and nobody in the inner sanctum of the Education Office picked me up on it?
I feel I ought to say, at this juncture, that I never fabricated or ignored the genuinely important stuff like grading students’ work. Mind you, I did once devise a spreadsheet that assigned grades at random, just to see what it was like. Disconcertingly, the results were not dissimilar to my actual marking.
In a sense, it’s relatively easy to deal with externally-imposed to-do lists. Like the time a deputy headteacher, announcing the arrival of school inspectors a few weeks hence, demanded that every teacher fill in a yellow notebook with the details of every lesson planned for the next six weeks.
Me to Deputy Head: I’ve got all my scheme of work for the whole year on a computer, so I’ll give you a printout.
DH: No, it has to be written out in a yellow book.
Me: OK, but may I just clarify something please? Are you suggesting that even if I’m running the best Computing department in the country I might fail the inspection because I’ve produced a computer printout instead of filling in a yellow book?
DH: I DON’T HAVE TO STAND HERE LISTENING TO YOUR SARCASM!
I have to say, it was tempting to respond by inviting him to sit down instead, but I had the impression that he wasn’t in a joking frame of mind. In any case, he was a decent bloke, clearly overwhelmed with the stress of an impending inspection. In the event, I quietly printed out my entire scheme of work and stapled it to a yellow notebook, where it remained in pristine condition, unsought after, for the entire duration of the inspection (which I passed with flying colours by the way).
Getting back to my own private to-do list, imposed by an insanely sadistic workaholic (me), lately I've been trying to tackle the problem of the ever-expanding to-do list in a different way. What, I ask myself, are the three or four things that I would really like to accomplish today? The three or four things that will leave me with a sense of achievement, perhaps even fulfilment, at the end of the day? If I remember, I'll let you know if this works, in a follow-up article. Hang on, I must add that to my to-do list…
I have similar lists, and always have. Then I try to slim them down to shorter, more focused lists so that I know what I have to do NOW... except that by the time I've slimmed down the list, there's more that needs to be done NOW as I should have already done it while I was listing it...
People like your deputy head are a constant source of irritated bemusement (yes, it is possible, but it takes practise) as I can never understand their problem. Streamlining a process is a good thing, surely? Unless, perhaps, you streamline too well and make them look like prevaricating dullards?
I have often thought I would be much more productive, or at least more successful at appearing to be productive, if I were a list maker. As it is, I only make lists when I reach the point of utter overwhelm. I hope that the apparent tendency to reach that point with greater frequency these days will be offset by a cumulative chronological inability to care.
This made me laugh out loud: "I DON’T HAVE TO STAND HERE LISTENING TO YOUR SARCASM!
I have to say, it was tempting to respond by inviting him to sit down instead."