'Men just don’t know that b-listful feeling of writing down their 'To Do' list'

02 September 2023 , 19:20

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Academics have agreed that women are more passionate list-makers (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

I've always been a passionate list-maker and often wonder whether lists are what truly separate men and women.

Forget Mars and Venus or X and Y chromosomes. The dividing line between the sexes is surely the one drawn with a ruler down a fresh page of your notebook, with the words To Do written neatly above. Because I’ve never met a man who writes a proper list or understands their power. Yet every time I mention the subject to women, their eyes light up and we discuss our current list status and the unique pleasure of “ticking things off ”.

Why don’t chaps feel the urge to write things down in tidy, colour-coded, underlined rows? And why can’t they follow someone else’s list – like the crystal clear one I wrote for my partner when he popped down to Tesco? OK, I’ll admit I accidentally numbered the items – as I’d just been re-prioritising my weekly, monthly and life lists. But I still can’t believe he actually returned with one pint of milk, two bananas, three loaves of bread, four cauliflowers and five boxes of muesli.

Academic Dr Joanna Nolan, from London University, agrees that women are more passionate list-makers. Her research suggests lists help us to multi-task and catalogue the “unseen” jobs we do. Yet when men make lists they are brief and functional , always “outcome-related”. But I believe it’s the process of list-writing that really matters.

When I sit down to start a new list, tick things off or re-number an old one, I feel more in control of my life. The act of writing down an intention commits me to doing it and, research shows, I’m then 33% more likely to achieve it. Lists can help us dream and reflect. They clear our thoughts and reduce anxieties. They boost confidence and improve memory. They tell us where we are and where we are going.

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I know I’ve been generalising and some men clearly love a list as much as we women. Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein were a few. And there was 19th century polymath Peter Mark Roget, whose Thesaurus is probably the most famous list of all. Biographer Joshua Kendall claims Roget’s life was dogged by mental health woes and family trauma. But, as a boy, “he stumbled upon a remarkable discovery – that compiling lists of words could provide solace, no matter what misfortunes may befall him.” I think that’s a point well worth underlining.

Rachael Bletchly