The To-Do List Read Online Free PDF Page B

took me the best part of three quarters of an hour to make it out of the store. This had less to do with leaf-picking-up devices (I managed to pick up one called ‘Big Green Hands’, that looked like a huge pair of plastic claws) and had more to do with the fact that I got distracted.
            There’s something incredibly comforting about DIY stores. I like the way they’re set out in aisles that you can wander up and down, I like the way that you can rarely tell what the weather’s doing once you’re inside but most of all I like the fact that they are filled with a hundred and one solutions to everyday problems and though I had 1,277 pressing problems, I couldn’t resist a few solutions to problems that I didn’t have yet which explains why, along with my ‘Big Green hands’, I left the store with two tubes of No More Nails, a scart plug, two bedside lamps, a device for detecting electrical cables behind walls, two packs of discounted Christmas baubles and a new set of Christmas lights, a cork notice board and a mini potted palm. I didn’t actually do any gardening that day because by the time I reached home it had started to rain.
     
    This haphazard, start-a-million-different-projects-but-finish-none-of-them attitude continued not just through the first day of the To-Do List, but through the first week and well into the second. But it wasn’t until the beginning of the third week as Claire and I sat down after putting Lydia to bed, that I finally admitted that perhaps Claire had made a good point about the necessity of a plan.
            ‘So how are you getting on with that List of yours?’ This was the first reference that she had made to the List since she’d reminded me of the Tile-Painting Incident.
            ‘Not great,’ I confessed. ‘Today I thought about learning Italian, I got a few tools out of the shed, I bought a load more stuff from B&Q that I neither needed nor wanted, I half wrote a letter to my Uncle Churchill in Jamaica whom I haven’t seen in thirty-odd years and I’m getting a bit sick of the fact that the loft still looks like a tip since my attempt to clear out the under-eaves space. It’s been a great couple of weeks for procrastination but not a brilliant one for getting things done. Okay, I admit it. You were right, I was wrong. There is no way that I’ll be able to keep this up if I don’t come up with a plan to fool myself into staying on course, so I’ve made a couple of decisions.’
            ‘Like what?’
            ‘Well, the first is that I’m not going to do anything more today, tomorrow, or for the rest of the week.’
            ‘So, some kind of less-is-more philosophy?’ joked Claire. ‘Let me know if it works!’
            ‘No.’ I narrowed my eyes in mock menace. ‘I do need a plan and I think I’ve finally got one.’
            ‘Which is?’
            ‘To take it one step at a time.’
            ‘And your first step is  . . .?’
            ‘Get some expert advice.’
            ‘From whom?’
            ‘Well, that’s the genius part,’ I said, tapping the side of my nose in a knowing fashion. ‘I’m planning to get my expert advice from the best in the business.’
            ‘What business would that be?’
            ‘The time business,’ I replied. ‘I’m going to get me some face time with a genuine Time Management guru.’
     

Chapter 5: ‘Get some advice from people who know what they’re talking about.’
    A couple of years ago, around the time I was turning thirty, I had a few moments similar to my current To-Do-List obsession when I thought I should sort my life out. I can see now it was the whole turning thirty ‘Where am I going? Where have I been? Where am I right now?’ thing but at the time it seemed like the moment to get myself organised.
            My first step was to head for the shops in the hope that purchasing useful things would miraculously