The Grammar of a To Do List

Organizing a day…

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Polly: Do you keep a diary?

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Annie: Nope. Used to. It made me think about keeping a regular habit. It made me practice writing. But then the act of writing every night became an end in itself. So now I just transfer the To Do tasks to an archive file.

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Polly: But a To Do list doesn’t read like a diary.

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Annie: No, more like a snapshot of a day in my life.

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Polly: What’s best language for writing to do lists?

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Annie: Personally, I note a start time, then location, people and describe the task beginning with a verb, then a noun. For example, 10:00: Room X203: panel members, present PPT Tokyo 2020.

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Polly: Do you need all that information?

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Annie: I don’t NEED to write all those, it just helps organize my thinking about a task.  “When” I need to do it, “where” I need to be, “who” is there, “what” I need to do, kicking off with an imperative verb, adding a noun phrase.

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Polly: Do you add any reason you’re doing these tasks?

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Annie: Not usually.

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Voice-over

“Why” is the ghost in the To Do machine. Unseen and generally unwritten. To Do Lists are something of a “wh4” creation.

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Children Asking "Why?"

Boy goading his mother…

Boy: Why do you have so many pumpkins?

Mother: To make pumpkin… oh, to make pumpkin marmalade.

Boy: Why did Franklin fly a kite in an electrical storm?

Mother: He wanted to become… to become a lightbulb.

Boy: Why did Lady Godiva ride on a horse with no clothes?

Mother: She wanted to… become a chocolate.

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Voice-over

Children’s "why" questions sometimes never end. Some children are merely curious. Others use the “why” question to provoke. Parents need reserves of inventiveness and even flippancy to preserve their sang froid and to send the child away to puzzle over why they answered as they did. Or perhaps ask, “What do you think?”
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