My time management is quite old-fashioned, mainly consisting of a to-do list. Three columns if I’m feeling particularly efficient: work; admin; personal. I never date it. There are some items that crop up so unfailingly, a smarter person would take them as given – such as “walk dog”. It’s almost as if I only put it on to give myself the illusory satisfaction of definitely having achieved something. My son, endearingly, made his first to-do list when he was five, and it simply said “1. Wake up.”
So anyway, I sat down this morning to what looked like a perfectly plausible set of tasks.
Jilly Cooper. Whatever is happening in the world, even if Rivals hasn’t just landed on Disney+, there’s always something useful to say about Jilly Cooper.
Victoria’s Secret. Again, sounds about right: the brand is all the TikTokers are talking about, ever since their angel wings show last month. I’m not sure what the young ’uns are saying about it. Perhaps it was my intention to find out?
EastEnders, golden era. After things looked dicey with its viewing figures last year, the show has turned a corner, the plot lines have caught fire. In its 40th year it has a new lease of life, and someone, possibly me, should definitely find out why.
James Dyson. Yup. The UK industrialist is all over the papers, commenting hotly on Rachel Reeves’s budget while failing to mention the extent of the farmland that he owns, which was previously exempt from inheritance tax. Honestly, the brass neck of the man.
Then I took a cursory glance at the list marked “Personal”:
Walk dog.
Call Dad.
For sure, I still have a dog, but my dad died in 2004. In fact, three weeks on Wednesday is the 20th anniversary of his death, and I was living in his house in that month. So unless I was intending to call him from downstairs, this to-do list was minimum 21 years old.
Now I’ve done a fresh to-do list, with an “urgent” column:
Find some better way to honour my father’s memory than circling the same drain of James Dyson’s character and the elaborate angel wings on some underwear models.
Don’t forget to walk the dog.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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