Do you have a List? I don't!

The wise people in my life have always advised me to be organized and making lists is the best way to get started.

However, I don’t make lists and when I do, I lose them somewhere and end up spending more time and effort searching for it and finally, it leads me to tears.

Before marriage, I never understood the value of time. My father always told me how important it is to make use of time and his formula was  'Time is God' but I didn't understand it. Of course, watching MTV and reading books and wandering out with friends is how I spent most of my time.

Now, I realize that if I had been more time-conscious, there is so much that I would love to do with my time. I have a lot of shortcomings as a person but I am very proud about the fact that I work very hard at everything that I do and I utilize my every hour of every day and extract the best out of it.

A normal day is when I just get very busy, going from task to task of what seems important, listening to my inner voice. I try and solve queries that come my way but it takes time and I don't realize that i have spent considerable time with X till its time to get back and focus on my deliverables.

There are meetings, updates, client communication and so many other little bullets that come my way during the day. Oh, I better not forget, I have to make routine calls to my home to check if my three year old has reached from playschool and whether he had a good day. There are times when I get paranoid if he is late. I imagine all kinds of terrible things happening to him on the way and then I just can't focus on my work till I have confirmed he is at home, safe and happy. There are times when there is a family member who is planning a visit so you need to make some calls and find out the time of arrival, things like that, or sometimes, you need to make a courtesy call to a family member who is hospitalized.

Busy as we are, we hardly get to meet relatives but the least we can do is to call and make sure things are ok and if not, offer moral support. In my case, all my relatives are in Kerala so I hardly get to meet them as often as I want to. 

Late evening, as soon as I am at home, I have endless chores to do that can't be listed. I have personal calls to make. I need to check if Adi's homework is due for the next day and whether he has done something about it. 

If not, I have to sit with him and help him complete it, which can take ages! We take sweet time to finish homework, you see, because there are endless questions to answer. I find it easier to answer questions from my team in office than from Adi. 

Well, we do lots of fun stuff too on the spur of the moment. Sometimes, I join him just like that to do some coloring. I like to give him feedback about his style too, not that I am a coloring expert, but i guess you get the drift. 

Other times, we read through his favorite Thumb Thumb Thambi Flower book which he loves me to read out over and over again, followed by the "What Shall I make?" book which we nicknamed as our 'chapati' book. The story is all about Neeraj's mom who kneads dough and he makes different shapes out of it like first a rope, then a snake, then rat and more deadly stuff like LION! The fun part is that I have to roar like a lion till my voice is about to break!

Tell me whether you have a list and how your normal day is spent. Do you want to schedule things differently? How prepared are you in case of an unexpected event? Would you like to talk about it?

Please do. At least, I can learn from it.