Breaking News: We’ve just added July 7th at the world famous Station Inn in Nashville (details on the tour dates page).
Here at last is my second instalment of the Manual for Right Brainedness. We’ve chosen to call it “Chapter 1″. Very original, I know.
Chapter 1:
Write It Down, Then Lose It
One of the most simple organizational tools, one used on a regular basis by our left-brained friends, is The List. And yet, we right-brainers can employ lists to help us get through life’s drudgery as well as anyone else. When I say “as well as”, however, I don’t mean that we necessarily use them in the same way, or for the same purpose. For the truly right brain dominant person, a list is a way of acknowledging those things that we need to remember at any given time. We write them down because, in a lucid moment, we have thought of them at the same time that we have a pen and paper (or pizza-stained napkin) within reach. It’s in what we do with the list that the real differences between us lie.
A left-brained person may compose a list that looks something like this (my comments are in italics):
List for Tuesday, May 16th, 2011 (it’s important for a left-brained person to first identify a list as being a “list”– I guess because maybe it could be mistaken for something else, like a mortgage bill, or perhaps a cabbage.)
HIgh priority:
1. Seminar prep (left-brained people attend or lead a lot of seminars)
1a. Collate notes from Wingate project (left-brained people collate a lot of things, sometimes including members of their own family)
2. Dry Cleaners @ 5:05 (heavy starch)
3. Call Lucia @ 5:20 (whoever she is)
Medium Priority:
1. Pay P.O. box bill (this bill is due 3 months from now)
2. Book Bert’s Pizza for Randy’s party (the pizza at this place is terrible!)
2 a. check on moving start time of party to 3:45 from 3:35 (Oh, come on!)
3. Reaccess network parameter conduits (every list like this should contain at lease one sentence that no one understands)
4. Return mushrooms to supermarket (naturally)
And that’s it. It turns out that nothing is “low-priority”. At the same time, it appears at first glance that this person really doesn’t have that much to do, at least not enough to justify listing it, but that’s my right brain talking. But really, when returning defective (probably not the word I was looking for) mushrooms makes it to “medium priority”, there really isn’t much going on here that couldn’t just be put off for a month or two, or possibly forever. I theorize, though, that one of the reasons for this is that the person who composed this list probably already did all the important things a week ago. That was all on last Monday’s list.
This brings us to the heart of the problem with the well-organized, left brain dominant life: you get things done quickly and effectively, getting your day-to-day issues dealt with long before a right-brained person can even remember what it was that needed to be done, but then what? In theory it leaves you more time for creative activities, but you’re not used to thinking or acting creatively, so you simply get more jobs done, only now they’re all largely unnecessary (unless those mushrooms were really smelling bad and you had purchased 90 pounds of them).
Now this is the kind of procedure you should be following if you want to adopt the right-brained style of list-making and list-following:
Close one eye, put the end of your pen in your mouth and ponder the day for several minutes. You have some important things to get done today, don’t you? But where was the paper you just had? Never mind, just write on the back of whatever this piece of paper is (turning it over, not noticing that it’s an overdue notice for your car insurance). Ideas begin to flow, so you write:
groceries
Donna
Halifax guy
“It Hurts to Know”
cat
615-555-3434
cleaners
wiper stuff
I know what you’re thinking: This just looks like some bizarre word association game played by an improv theatre group, but it’s actually a left-brained persons typical “to do” list. It makes sense to the person who wrote it, and that’s what matters. To translate:
“Groceries” is self-explanatory. No need to have a specific list, because when you’re at the store, you will simply meander the aisles in a stream of consciousness way, and you’ll instinctively get what you need (except perhaps the bread and milk, which was mainly what you were out of).
“Donna” is someone named Donna who needs to be called, or contacted, or something.
“Halifax guy” is also self-explanatory: This is a guy in Halifax who was possibly going to book your band at a series of “ceilis” in eastern Canada next January. Okay, it actually isn’t self-explanatory, but the point is, “Halifax guy” is really all that needs to be written down for you to understand what it’s about, unless there are two Halifax guys in your life, and what are the chances of that?
“It Hurts to Know” is a song idea that sprang into your head while you were writing the other things down. Too bad it’s already been used by the Osborne Brothers and Red Allen in the late ’50s
“Cat”. This means you need to do something-or-other related to your cat.
“615-555-3434″ A phone number you need to remember. Attaching a name to it, would be such a left-brained thing to do. You rely on the numbers to trigger the rest of the information. Perhaps they will.
“Cleaners” is our first list item in common with the left-brained list. The big difference (besides the left-brainer listing this as “Dry Cleaners – 5:05″) is that this is to remind you about some shirts that were dropped off there last April.
“WIper stuff”: This shows mechanical inclination. You need to add windshield wiper fluid to you car’s reservoir, but you couldn’t think of what that blue liquid is actually called.
So what, then, do you do with this clearly useful list? When you have finished with this book, it is my hope that you will have the proper right-brained training to do the following:
1. Turn the list over and go make yourself a cup of coffee. When you return, the list is missing, but you notice that there’s an overdue notice for your car insurance, so you’d better pay that right away. You go in search of your cheque book, which you think is somewhere in the area of your desk.
2. Once at the desk, you see some stationery that was a birthday gift in 1995. It reminds you that you’ve been meaning to write your beloved Aunt Susan in California (you still write letters, though some are never mailed). You write the note, then realize you don’t know where your address book is.
3. Looking at your travel alarm, still set on western European time, because you had a good tour there and didn’t feel like changing it, you realize that you need to get out and make your store run, and something else on that list that will no doubt come to you when you’re out.
4. Once out, you realize that you needed to add “wiper stuff”, and now you really need it, so you pull over, find some in the trunk under a duffle bag containing 3 socks, add it, and proceed on your way.
5. Once at the supermarket, you find lots of useful things, including a brand of cottage cheese you hadn’t seen in years. You don’t purchase bread or milk. You pay with a credit card (the chequebook was never found)
6. You see a stain on the cuff of your shirt while driving home, and it reminds you of the cleaners. You stop there, and they find your shirts with some difficulty, and they explain that they normally don’t keep customers’ clothes that long.
7. Back home, you put away the groceries, feed the cat (with the food you remembered to buy, just as you were checking out and saw a picture of a cat with two heads on the front page of a tabloid) and go back to your desk to look for that address book.
8. Once there, you’re attracted to a new, untouched legal pad, and you sit down and start work on chapter 1 of a novel set in 19th century Wyoming.
So there, in 8 easy steps is a right-brainers way of accomplishing goals though list-making. The results are tangible and impressive, really. Sure, the list was never actually used, and only a few items on it were completed, but look at what did get done: groceries were purchased, good cottage cheese was discovered, clothes were picked up from the cleaners, cats were fed, “wiper stuff” was replenished (3/4 of a cup of it, anyway), an Aunt was written to, and a novel set in 19th century Wyoming was started. The Halifax guy, Donna and whatever that other phone number was can wait. They’ll understand. What can the left-brained person say about a comparable day? That he moved the start time of a party at a lousy pizza place by 10 minutes? Clearly the less mathematical and systematic right-brainer had the better day.
Exercise for chapter 1:
Make your own to-do list. Use one word or less to describe what you need to accomplish. Just list whatever comes to mind at the time. You can always add to it later, if you can find a pen. Bring the list with you, or don’t, as you start the process of completing the tasks. If you do bring it with you, fold it several times, place it in your pocket and never look at it again. Have a good right-brained day!
