Three Useful Lists You Should Make Immediately
The Joy of Finding a Place for the Things in Your Brain
“We like lists because we don’t want to die.” — Umberto Eco in Spiegel International
The cited article goes into a whole lot of psychological and cultural reasons lists are so ubiquitous, but I think Mr. Eco pretty much nailed it, though I think it’s not really death as in the grim reaper.
I think it’s a different kind of death: irrelevance. Not mattering to anyone or anything. If you have a list, you have things to do, or things which you possess, or things you have noticed, all of which reinforce your connection with the world.
A list gives us a concrete handle on our small part of the chaos of infinity, giving the illusion of manageability to the endless unknowable never-ending stream of information and events in the world.
What makes a list effective?
Here a list of things on my shelf:
- Araki book
- Glass tray
- Non-reading glasses
- Cleaning cloth
- iPhone tripod
Now that you’ve read it, you might have some image in your mind of what this looks like.
