This is a post about New Year’s resolutions. But I missed the yearly time window for writing about resolutions while I was acting on my other resolution of starting this blog, so please join me in pretending that it’s not about those.1
I’m a list maker at heart. These are just some of the lists in my life that come to mind:
- YouTube videos to watch later
- The queue of songs to listen to on Spotify
- A spreadsheet of movies and TV, further divided into:
- Things I want to watch
- Things I’m in the middle of watching
- Things I want to watch
- Several lists of books I’ve read, split between multiple spreadsheets and a Storygraph account2
- Several lists of books to read, similarly split between spreadsheets and Storygraph
- A grocery list for the week3
- A long term list of other physical items to get
- A Christmas list (things I wanted circa December 2023)
- A Christmas list (things I recently gave my loved ones)
- A Christmas list (starting on things I’ll want circa December 2024)
- Saved posts on Instagram
- Friends to see
- Restaurants to try
- Restaurants I like
- Browser bookmarks across two computers, further organized and tabbed and subfoldered
- [REDACTED] lists for work
- Names that would be good to call a cat4
- Ideas for further blog posts
- This meta-list of lists…
Consider this post to be my own personal intervention. The institution of Lists has gotten out of hand in my life.
When I sit down to watch a movie, I defer to the list instead of thinking about what piques my interest that day. If I spend all of my time going through the list of work links, I’ll never get my actual work done. My list of books to read has grown beyond a decade’s worth of reading, even at a pace quicker than I’ve ever gone through books. If I buy all the things that I’ve ever thought I wanted, I’ll empty my bank account.
I must admit, however, that the title of this post is an exaggeration. I love lists, and even after today, I’ll almost certainly be using a lot of the ones above. Humans are pattern recognizers after all, and it’s super helpful to store examples of a pattern (say, recipes I know I like) in the same place outside of my memory.5 Writing down the groceries that I need as I think of them throughout the week is almost universally a better system than going to the store, trying to remember the things I need while wandering the aisles, and having to go back to the store when I inevitably forget to grab milk.
So perhaps not Against Lists, but Towards Better Lists:
- Shorter lists, focusing on the best of the best. There are lots of worthwhile things in the world that I will never experience, and there are plenty of things on my lists that aren’t worth my time.6
- Less completionism. Putting something on a list doesn’t mean I have to do it, and taking things off of the list can be just as important as putting them on the list.
- Fewer optional, long-term to-do lists. To-do lists can be helpful when they’re things that I need to do (like work, or errands) or when they’re short-term, but trying to give myself a list of books to read five years from now isn’t doing me any good.
- No lists that I don’t actually use. The list of cat names is fun but entirely pointless. If I’m ever tasked with naming another cat, it’ll have to come from the heart in that moment.
- Fewer “I’ll get to it later” lists. There’s nothing wrong with coming back to something later, but once I make it a list it becomes too easy to add things to the list that aren’t worth coming back to later.
- And most importantly, reviewing and deleting my lists when they’re empty.
Wish me luck!
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As a base level of pretending, the word “resolution” does not appear in the rest of the text. ↩︎
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An attempt to simplify all these spreadsheets, though I’m falling into the problem of proliferating standards. ↩︎
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Ground coriander has been on this list for over a month. ↩︎
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Wikipedia informs me that other animals also recognize patterns. The hunt for a precise definition of the human condition goes on. ↩︎
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False negatives and false positives of the lists, in a manner of thinking. ↩︎