The To-Do List

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 30 September 2011 09:42:39

So my first bit of easy reading was The To-Do List by Mike Gayle. It's a book telling the story of how he came up with a list of 1277 things he "wanted" to do in a year and then did over 99% of them. It's a book for those of us who are most definately J's on the Myers Briggs scale. It's a book to be identified with but also to make us realise why the rest of the world might sometimes find us just a tad annoying.

Personally I drifted into the to-do list culture somewhere between 2000 and 2002 (I know it was somewhere between starting my PGCE and completing my first year in a teaching job, but quite where it occurred I don't know). Now my lists are a part of my life and a running joke / source of tearing their hair out to those closest to me.

Anyway, this book has inspired me to do a similar type list to Gayle - things I need to do, things I should do and things I'd like to do but still come within the bounds of being reasonable. Mine is only about a 10th of the size though and will have to be completed on a much smaller budget.

As for the time scale - I have two running together. Some of the stuff like number 77 - go to Ikea and 115 - go on a Wii I would like to achieve by the time I reach my 40th birthday at the end of January; others I would like to achieve by late summer next year, when I move away from Durham.

Some are short term goals which will be able to be ticked off with a simple strike of the pen and others are more long term and will need to be monitored over the next 11 months - for example 103 - read 100 books.

For those who are thinking, "another impossible challenge" like her reading the bible in a year - well possibly, but number 37 is "resume Bible in a Year and catch up the bits I fell behind on over the summer".

Keep an eye open here for book reviews and updates on some of the shareable moments on this particular journey. By the way I am counting The To-Do List as book number one, even though the challenge technically started after I finished reading this.