A Spork in the Road

As a consequence of having a memory like a sieve, I have developed two significant skills: making lists, and doing research.

My pedigree in research goes back to when I was an intern at Goddard Space Flight Center in the mid 90’s. The Internet was brand-spankin’-new, at least to the general public. That summer — let’s see, 1996 — one of the project managers set me to work researching something or other on the web. I don’t remember what. (See what I mean about the memory thing?) Google hadn’t even entered the collective consciousness, and there was a bit more work involved in finding useful information than would be required today. At the time, I was puzzled by his delight with the results of my research; it seemed a laughably easy task.

In retrospect, I realize my willingness to get lost on this new intarweb thangie, combined with a decent sense of what information was useful and what wasn’t, was not as common as I thought. And going back to the issue of memory, I’m fairly adept at storing and indexing the results of my research so that I can find the information again once I’ve forgotten it.

Likewise, lists. Ah, beloved list. I cannot comprehend how anyone functions without lists. How do you remember what you’re supposed to do? How do you remember what you’ve already done?

I make a daily to-do list in my trusty steno pad — which I archive, so I can effectively reconstruct most of my work days going back several years — and check things off when they get done, or roll them forward to the next day if they’re not.

Then I also have a master to-do list with everything, personal or professional, that needs to happen within the couple of weeks. This gets changed out when a page fills up, with only the remaining uncompleted items rolling forward.

And of course, since I’m a contractor and have multiple clients, there’s a to-do list for each project, which helps me with billing, reporting, and general project management.

These lists are my safety nets, my backup system, my salvation from memory failure. Were it not for my list system, I would double-bill some people and forget to invoice others; I would sit and stare helplessly at my screen, wondering what to do next; I would certainly have gone out of business long ago, and would probably have a lot more creditors and angry taxmen at my door.

I know there are people who never make to-do lists. I know this intellectually, but it boggles the mind. How do they live?