Cross it off: the comforting creation of lists

THE first item is written down with purpose. The handwriting is legible and even has a bit of embellishment.

I think I may have cracked open a brand new Mitsubishi ‘Uni-ball Eye Fine’ pen for the purpose. (For those who no longer use pens, the Uni-ball is sort of the Volvo of pens. They don’t do ads but if they did, it would star a fella who looks a bit like Dick Byrne from Glenroe, leaning on a mantelpiece at a party holding one. A woman goes up to him and purrs: “Uni-ball – the mark of a man”). Armed with this kind of pen, clearly, I meant business this time. I was going to do a to do list.

Now, about a month later, I have came across the list again in a notebook marked “TO DO Lists”. One task was completed and crossed off with a flourish. The rest lay untouched. It looked like a written version of a ghost estate. So full of promise when it was originally conceived, now it was abandoned, a reminder of folly.

Listing is comforting. During busy times, all the individual tasks seem to float around vying for attention. The list puts manners on them. Bullet points separate their squabbling selves from each other as if to say “Colm will deal with YOU later”. Crossing things off a list is one of life’s more pleasurable things to do. Each ink-obliterated task is a level cleared on the unending Super Mario Brothers game of life, a step closer to … well it’s best not to think too much about what you’re getting closer to, otherwise you won’t do a stroke.

This is of limited use if I haven’t prioritised the list. If I’ve just written it down in an effort to silence the shouting in my brain, most of my productive time is spent counting the brown coins in the jar beside the bed and emptying the dishwasher with no time left for “Write the era-defining Irish Novel”. The other problem is that lists are very comfort-giving, which means our brains consume them like junk food.

A greater proportion of all the written media we see now is in the form of lists. Show me two links on a news website — one which says “An in-depth examination of the origins of the Ukrainian crisis” or “7 CATS YOU CAN’T BELIEVE ARE CATS” and I know which one I’m going to go for. This diet of bitesize information is profoundly dissatisfying and the brain is left with something of a sense of bloat.

Even respectable newspapers have followed this trend. Chief among them is the “X ways you know you are Irish” brand which is so ubiquitous now that you could assemble a list entitled “23 Articles Which List Irish Traits”. I’ve written listy-type articles myself and here’s a bit of a trade secret: People write listy-type articles when they’re stuck for an idea. Apart from this one obviously. I’ve been meaning to write this for ages and can finally cross it off the list.

nColm’s next TO DO is Ireland’s Got Mammies at the Ballymaloe Grainhouse on Sunday March 30th, Mother’s Day (ballymaloe.ie)