If you’re like me, you’ll be drowning in lists by now. Presents you’re going to give. Maybe presents you hope to get. Food you need to buy. Work you need to finish. You might even have got going on your list of things to cut out in 2019.
In my experience, you are either a list-maker or you’re not. It’s a binary selection of options, ironically. How do those who are not list-makers manage to get from one end of their day to the other? Altogether now: listlessly!
Glimpsing someone else’s list is pure voyeurism. The illicit thrill of finding a discarded one in your supermarket basket. Crude, short-hand scrawls intended for the shopper’s eye only, reminding them of the domestic absence of cranberry sauce, goose fat and sprouts (small bag). For some reason, a peek at the list is a hundred times more exciting than just looking at what they buy at the till – where the promise has been delivered but is so much less potent by comparison (paging Freud…).
Even if you don’t make them yourself, by this time of year you can’t avoid them. Best songs of the year. Best books, TV shows and films of the year. Maddest Donald Trump tweets of the year. Ten 2018 tweets that are way too real. Ok, I made the last one up but check Buzzfeed next week.
It seems that everything at this end of the year is condensed to a list. We need to absorb a whole twelve months’ worth of information all at once while we’re still struggling to tick everything off ourselves.
Lucky you if by now you’ve been able to consolidate a few of your own lists into one. Your festive food list with your last-minute present list, perhaps. Or your mad Trump tweets list with your list of things to cut out in 2019. It hints there might be light at the end of the tunnel.
In reality, there’s no escape, as soon after Christmas the quiet news schedules are full of Honours lists and those-we-have-lost lists. Meanwhile, you’re piously drawing up your list of new year’s resolutions for a happier, healthier, better you. Although, this one seems more like a list-junkie’s methadone to wean off the hard stuff after the heady listing binge of December. Cold turkey? Tick.
What all list-makers realise eventually is that there is no end. Just when you think you’ve crossed out the last item on one, you find the need to start another and the whole process begins all over again. If nothing else, writing this piece has at least given me the chance to tick one more item off my own never-ending cycle..
I hope your festive list delivers on its promise and if you need any help ticking off your communications goals for 2019, I’d be happy to help. Merry Christmas.
Richard Ellis Communications 