List people

We all know list people. They enumerate every task and derive great satisfaction from being able to mark an item as complete.  I have, in the past, looked down upon list people.  I thought their obsession with lists was a personality flaw that inhibited them from being able to work on-the-fly.  Recently, as anyone who reads this blog might know, I have been reevaluating all of my premises given the failure of my recent startup venture.  I think my aversion to, and view of, list people was one of my faulty premises.

Part of that realization stemmed from a conversation that resulted in a blinding rage.  A friend of mine was trying to convince me that you can not learn from books.  She said you can only learn by doing, and books are just noise.  I read obsessively because of an agreement I have with Sir Francis Bacon.  Part of her reason for saying this might have been because the conversation was political, and as we were on different sides of the issue, she was personally attacking me.  It happens.  Anyway, to defend my view of books I not-so-calmly tried to explain to her that people who hold such a viewpoint read books passively.  If you are not continuously evaluating and challenging what the author is saying, then yes, a book's value is greatly reduced (as is reading only books you agree with before reading).  If you read a book actively, taking time to devour new points of view while being able to call “Bullshit”, then a book is a learning device with incredible bandwidth.  I read actively.

This brings me back to my misunderstanding of lists as a practical tool.  If you use a list as a passive device, it is of little value.  It just enhances what may be a rigid personality.  Alternatively, if you use a list as an active device there is a great benefit.  For example, I have always scoffed at things like an Entrepreneurial Check List because I thought they were offensive to creativity. I was wrong. If you actively evaluate your idea/project against a check list with the intention of challenging your own assumptions, you will be more likely to succeed.  Again, if you're a rigid person and use such a list as a passive tool, as in “my idea must pass every test”, it's just silly whereas if you use it to question the validity of your own ideas, it's incredibly valuable.

Fixed faulty assumption…check.