Advice for Remy, Day 57. Make lists and lists (and lists of your lists). If you grow up to be as mentally disorganised as me, you'll need to perfect the sacred and hallowed art of making lists. When there are hundreds of different things flitting around your mind - whether related to work, school, home or something more fun – you’ll invariably get to the point where you can't balance them all neatly inside your head without them rolling off all over the place. Chaos and disorder is as destructive to your thoughts and ideas as it is to any more physical and tangible area of life, so it's essential to find a way to put things neatly in their place - even if they're just abstract thoughts. Admittedly, sometimes it can get out of control, and the very act of making your lists can stop you actually doing any of the things on them. But this listmaker’s paradox is part of the process - I still hold firm that lists are a necessary tool and will help you out more than they hinder you. I find that the easiest way to start is by writing down a few items as bullet points, in the order they pop into your head. You'll soon probably notice that a few of these items have themes in common, so group these together under a heading (eg 'Emails to send', with the individual tasks indented underneath this). You'll also realise that some tasks or themes are more vital or pressing than others, so move these up or down depending on their urgency or importance (if you’re anything like me you’ll introduce glorious colour coding at this point to take you onto a higher spiritual plane of listmaking). Eventually you'll end up with a beautiful and neat list of things - all your thoughts or tasks or ideas all in one place, stacked by category and ordered from most to least important. Perfect. All that’s left at this point is to go for a coffee, completely forget about the list and have to do it all again in a few days time.
