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 â like the crystal clear one I wrote for my partner when he popped down to Tesco?
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 â 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 â 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.