There is something practical yet sinister about a jobslist. It’s all about control. String-pulling from afar. Whilst I say that it is also true that I won’t do anything if it isn’t written down. This stems from a time where jobs would be fired at me as if from a verbal machine gun. I couldn’t cope. Having finished one job another would appear. It was very dispiriting. A bit like climbing a mountain. You reach one rise only to find there is another ahead of you.
To avoid this scenario I began to insist that the jobs be written down on a list. That way I could gauge the scope of it all and apportion time as appropriate. This worked but I quickly found that having crossed one or two off the list, more jobs would appear. This was no different to the old way when nothing was written down. It was in effect an endless list.
I put a stop to that. No new jobs could be added until every one on the existing list was crossed off. That way a sense of satisfaction could be reached when all the jobs were done. New jobs could go on a new list after a suitable period of recovery. This intermission would also allow me to bask in the glow albeit short that came from completing all the jobs.
So whilst in one sense a jobslist is about one person controlling another it is also a means of control for the person doing the jobs.
