Glazomania.
The couch scientific research council has done some digging, in consultation with Prof Google, about glazomania ‒ the compulsion to make lists ‒ and how widespread it is.
There’s quite a lot of research and opinion out there: I made a list of items to read more thoroughly when there’s time.
It appears to be common and many pieces suggest it’s widely used by people who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder. One look at the area around the couch and you’ll know that’s not the reason for my copious lists. Housekeeping and orderliness is on the “sorta needs doing, but not now because I have a book” list. It’ll get done when it really needs doing and in between life’s more pleasurable activities. Like lying on the couch, reading, with Zeus’s paws curled around my toes.
A good list to make and update frequently is a gratitude list for when a klap around the head is required to remind you of all the things you should be grateful for. That type of list makes you focus on the good things in life and puts the other stuff in perspective. If you look hard enough, you’ll find many, often simple, things that make you thankful, which is why you need to think about it. It’s a hardcore weapon against the deluge of negative in the world.
A proper list can also give you the delusion of being in control. Once it has been considered and compiled, you can even put it down with a sense of achievement at having identified what needs to be done.
You can double the reward when you actually get around to doing something you’ve demanded of yourself, floating for days on the ridiculous feeling of joy and accomplishment when you can tick it off.
Lists can be of anything and everything: there are whole books of lists, one of the best examples probably being the Guinness Book of Records. How do you top that?
But we’re talking everyday lists here. The “to do” lists for the day, the week, the month. Cross some of those babies off and your heart will smile.
But there is a downside.
There is always a pen and notepad on my desk in the space where a mouse pad is on other people’s desks. Everything is jotted down: names, dates, times, story ideas, reference numbers, the names of call centre people, things to do, reminders. If you use your own shorthand, nobody else will know what it’s about. Sometimes I have to think hard about what was going on when I made a particular note.
When that notepad is full, it is kept for reference and reminders. I started a new one last week, but I have put the old one somewhere safe, losing about six months’ worth of Very Important Notes. The usual safe spots have been searched ‒ the ones I remember, anyway ‒ and that historic record is gone. Feel I should write a Dan Brown novel or a “Raiders of the Lost Ark” movie about it.
The illusion of control is still there, however. I shall use one of the pages in the current notepad to make a list of all the safe spots. Until it is full and “filed”. Is that “glazed-o-mania”?
- Lindsay Slogrove is the news editor
The Independent on Saturday