Listlessnesslessness

[j4]

All lists of stuff to do today; lists at work, trying to do proper task lists at useful levels of granularity instead of writing the thing that really needs doing at the top of the list and then adding lots of small and manageable things so that I have something to procrastinate into from the big thing. There's always one big guilty project and then lots of small bits and bobs. I'm getting better at using things that are actually-useful-but-not-at-all-urgent as my procrastination-food, rather than things that are actually just timewasting, but some days it feels like an uphill struggle to do anything. I know all sorts of useful GTD theories, I have found the wisdom of 43folders invaluable, but at the end of the day a lot of the getting-things-done comes down to just actually, you know, getting things done. Ticking things off the list.

Lists of music, too; we've been going through the Guardian's '1000 albums to listen to before you die' series, which is a bit like looking through the record collection of somebody whom you really like but don't yet quite get, if you see what I mean. It's a bizarre collection of interesting recommendations, pretentiousness, obviousness, obscureness, coolness and craziness. I'm ticking off a fair number of them. At home, the aim is to tick off more records than Owen; at work, the game's played the other way round, and being able to tick off more than anybody else means a concomitant loss of credibility. 'Humiliation', as played in Changing Places: what's the most famous book you haven't read? (Music-wise, at work, an honourable draw was agreed when we established that none of us had ever deliberately listened to a record by Elvis Presley.) High Fidelity: Mornington Crescent.

Listlessness: the state of mind one finds oneself in when one doesn't have a list of things to do, places to go, books to read, albums to listen to. Wandering aimlessly; wandering freely.

Comments

[j4.livejournal.com]

I've managed to read a book of Jeffrey Archer short stories & enjoy it in a kind of braindead way, but The Da Vinci Code really did keep jarring me, as you say. And if I wanted ZOMG CONSPIRACY THEORY I'd re-read Foucault's Pendulum, or Illuminatus!... or even go back and re-read all those bloody von Daniken books I read as a teenager. I mean, I've read books by Graham Hancock which were less tossy than The Da Vinci Code. Maybe I should read "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" or whatever Dan Brown nicked it all from. Or watch the film, since the book read rather like a crap novelisation of a film... is the film any good?

I did enjoy the Harry Potter books, though, despite all their (many, various, obvious) flaws. Wasn't bothered by the predictability of the sub-plots because they were standard schoolfic -- I've read literally hundreds of school stories and it's probably the genre I'm most affectionate/forgiving towards.

[sparrowsion]

The standard view of The Da Vinci Code film is that it is superior to the book in that it wastes fewer hours of your life. Not that I've experienced either.

I've also never read any Jane Austen.

[caramel-betty.livejournal.com]

I have, because I remember the inevitable "So, do you reckon she was a lesbian then, eh?" conversation. I don't remember the actual reading, however.