One of the speakers at the Stampin' Up! Convention said something that really stuck with me. She said that men and women have totally different approaches to to-do lists. If men ever bother to make a to-do list, they put maybe 4 or 5 things on it. Then they start at the top and do them in order. The second they are done with the last one, they celebrate. They sit down, pop a beer, and turn on their favorite sports program. After all, they deserve it, they finished their list! I think there's a lot to be said for this approach.

Women, on the other hand, always have these endless to-do lists. Even if it's just in our heads, we always have this enormous list of "things" we feel that we have to do to keep everyone happy and keep the homestead running. And if you work outside the home, you have two sets of to-do lists. I literally have a to-do list that reflects this.



I've been using this one on and off since January and sure enough, the Home section has a few pages used up, the Play Section almost never gets any pages, but the Work section has at least twice as many pages used up. And that whole celebration part? It's just not happening. Even if I get 10 things done on my list, I'm too busy beating myself up about the other 5 that didn't get done. Or worse, I'll make the tasks so enormous that I might only get one or two done in a whole day and you can't really celebrate that, can you?

This is funny though - I had to put in a little sidebar. Have you ever seen a guy with a to-do list? It never fails, you give him a list and he starts right up there with #1 and then moves to #2, etc. Even if #1 and #3 are in the same neighborhood, he will drive all over town before he figures out the efficient way to do them. But if you give a woman the exact same list, she instinctively puts them into a logical order - OK, I can pick up item 4 when I'm on the way to take the boys for soccer, I can get this when I drop off the dry cleaning, and I can stop at the post office on the way to the bank. That's just the way we think. We have to, it's a matter of survival for us.

I remember when my Mom retired. I would ask her to come over for something and she'd say she would try to fit it in because she had such a busy day. And I'd ask her what she needed to do, and she would say that she had to go to the bank, pay the bills, and pick up something for dinner. And I would just be dumbfounded. "Geez Ma, that's #26, #32 & #38 on my to-do list. Are ya kiddin' me?" But I guess that's the difference between a working Mom with a couple of young, active kids, and a retired senior citizen.

Anyway, I think my point was that we need to be more like men - more celebrating, less do's! And if you give a man a to-do list, for heaven's sake, sort it out for him first - poor lamb. He'll never figure it out on his own!




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