Okay, she doesn’t really work for Acme Ltd. I can’t really tell you where she’s employed but please picture a very, very big UK organisation.

Similarly, she’s also not an investigative officer, though that title is pretty close to the real one and does give you an idea of what she does.

Last, she’s not called Melissa Dale. I just asked her: what would you like me to call you since I can’t use your real name? I have no clue why she picked Melissa Dale. But it’s a good name, isn’t it?

Here’s the thing. Melissa works a compressed week at Acme and is fairly new to it or at least fairly new to her current responsibilities. But she’s just suddenly taken on much more work: her own jobs have grown plus she’s inherited tasks from a colleague.

Melissa has never before been a To Do list kind of person but now she says she has to be. The sheer volume of work drove her to writing a To Do list:

Because I felt a bit overwhelmed and felt I had to get it out of my head and onto paper. To tame it.

She specifically chose to write her list on paper despite Acme having all manner of computer systems and Melissa herself being very familiar with her Mac, iPhone and iPad:

It’s a more tactile thing. It feels the best way of getting it out of my brain and onto there a list. It’s more physical doing it pen to paper rather than on screen. [I don’t usually write To Do lists but] it seems to work for me sometimes.

She is now using a computer but not through wanting the benefits of a To Do task manager. Instead, she moved to her Acme PC specifically:

Because the list got so long and I kept taking things off and adding things to the bottom. I felt I couldn’t be bothered to keep writing it out every day so that drove me to a computer.

Right now she’s using just a list in Microsoft Word. If you’ve read this site for more than ten minutes and you noted that Melissa has a Mac and iOS devices, you may be thinking I would recommend OmniFocus.

I did. But she doesn’t want to go to OmniFocus, she doesn’t want to go to Things or any other system:

Because I don’t usually write To Do lists, I need to find for myself what works for me.

By this process, Melissa began with no list at all, then moved to paper and is currently writing in Word. I expect she’ll find To Do managers next – but I could be wrong. That’s why I’m going to be following what she does over the next few months.

That sounds mean, like I’m following her from a science or statistics interest when really I just want her to be okay. Still, she’s so different to me that it is fascinating to see what she solutions she looks for and what solutions she finds.

Besides, she said that thing about needing “to tame” her tasks. How could you not now follow someone who says that?