It is easy to think that if you write something down, you’re going to remember it for the rest of your life. But the reality is that most of us can only remember a few things (and often those are the things we didn’t write down in the first place!).
That’s why we write things down. As writer/reader Ann Shulman says, “you use the written word to keep track of your thoughts, not to keep track of your memory.” However, we still need to write down some things because often our thoughts are simply not recorded or remembered.
For example, I wrote down my favorite color a few years ago while riding on my motorcycle. It was a really tough decision because I had a lot of favorites so I ended up writing down the first few letters in a rainbow of colors that I liked and then I wrote down the rest of them in a word processor. I still had the rainbow of colors and word processor, but I could have sworn that I never wrote those down.
This is one of the main reasons why this particular list of things to write down is not a one-size-fits-all list. Just because you like to list all the things you like doesn’t mean you have to use a word processor. I wrote down the alphabet in one word processor, but it was not because I liked the alphabet so much that it was the best way to list the things I like.
You can write lists of what you like and what you don’t like, you can write lists of what you do and what you dont do, and you can write lists of how people act and what they dont. All of these sorts of lists can be incredibly helpful, but there’s some good news. They are all useful because they are different and help you separate the good from the bad.
I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard people say, “I like lists.” This is such a wonderful concept that if only the people with lists would stop saying it to each other.
Lists are great because they are different. They can help you break down your own tendencies, habits, and preferences. But they can also be used for good. List of how you act and list of what you do is a great way to start a conversation with someone. It can help you decide if you want to sit in the same room as them. Or, if you do, you can ask them to start a list of their own.
One of my favorite lists of all time is the one by the late, great John Steinbeck. It’s a great list, and one that gets me thinking more about why I talk to people. I don’t just talk to them because I like them, or because I always have to. I’m pretty good at making lists. And I love lists because they give me some structure, focus, and I can refer to them in my own writing.
That’s not to say that I don’t like lists. I do, but at the end of each list, there’s a section that I like to write. There are times when I might go back and edit the list as I go through it. I’ll come back to a list and see if I can make it better, or at least better than I wrote it.
