I love making To-Do lists! I love that feeling of jotting down the errands I have to run and other things I have to do on a fancy, usually colourful, notepad. I love stationery too, but we’ll talk about that some other day.

Every morning, I sit down with my coffee and my cutesy little diary and make a list. Buy apples, tomatoes, potatoes. Reply to Shivani’s email. Complete the book I started 2 weeks ago. Call Vaishali, it’s been a while. Book train tickets for my next trip home. Oh yes, buy lemons. Add that to point 1. I should start drinking lime juice and honey every morning too. Hmm, maybe that one needs to be noted down as well.

Ah! It’s such a joy noting down these little things that seem to clog up my brain. By the time these teensy snippets are out of my head, and staring back at me from a notepad, all neat and organized, my coffee cup is empty, and I feel good.

I sit back, feeling extremely organized. I just know that it’s going to be a productive day!

But you know what? I love the feeling of having ‘planned’ everything so much, it gives me a sense of such accomplishment. It almost feels like I’ve done it already, just by organizing and sorting it out on paper. And then, I never get around to actually doing any of the items on my list!

What follows is this. Every morning I repeat this ritual of putting down even the tiniest errand on my notepad. Being the eternal optimist I am, I just ‘carry forward’ the previous day’s items and convince myself that today is going to be extra productive. And then… well, you already know what happens.

I am starting to think that maybe I am not a very To-Do-list-kind-of-a-person. That is pretty sad. I do so love writing out everything that seems to be cluttering my mind. And I do love stationery. Colourful diaries, pens of all kinds and colours, sticky notes, bookmarks, stickers.

FYI, eventually I do end up completing most of the tasks on my To-Do list. These tasks are completed in any order, over a period of many days, when I ‘feel’ like doing something, or it suddenly becomes convenient or because someone else helps me check an item off my list (Thanks Vaishali for calling me, I would have definitely called you this Sunday. But chalo good that you called me. I can tick that off my list).

A lot of items also get checked off when they suddenly become urgent and I have no choice but to run the errand right then. A good example would be putting off buying groceries, until one fine morning when the maid shows up for work and tells me “didi tamaatar nahi hai.” 

Sigh.

Ah never mind. I will continue to make my To-Do lists. I will wake up tomorrow, make a lovely cup of coffee and sit with my notepad and colourful pens and write down diligently all the things I need to do. Then I will finish the dregs of my coffee and look forward to another productive day!