I like lists. No, I really like lists. I find myself making them all the time, I even have a wordpress category (which is really just a list) about iTunes playlists.

I’m not so keen about being on other people’s lists though.

I didn’t used to like the teacher taking the register at school. I can’t really explain why, but something to do with the formality of reading everyone’s name out still makes my stomach turn. I’d get more and more nervous as it got towards ‘S’. Keen, Robinson, Stocks, Shaw. It felt like once the register had been taken, that was the start of the school day and you couldn’t go anywhere for the next six hours.

I can also remember having lots of really awkward moments with the class register. My class seemed to have lots of tricky names that new teachers would always struggle with, like Szejner and Oschovi (I know I’ve spelt that wrong). There was the time a girl had died and the teacher didn’t know. He got to her name and kept reading it out again and again, getting really annoyed that nobody in class would say that she wasn’t here. We all just looked at the floor not knowing what to say.

Once you leave the school there are even more lists that you need to be on. Now, I work for big corp inc. so I should have expected a few. What’s surprising is that most of the lists seem to be career related. We have assessment lists, ranking lists, potential technical leaders lists, technical resource lists, executive resource lists, top talent lists (which is a particular favourite as it’s colloquially known as the ‘top totty’ list), inventors lists, senior inventors lists, master inventors lists, master inventors who are really brainy lists. The lists go on and on.

These lists fill me with the same kind of dread I used to have about the register. Why can’t I just be a number? It’s much nicer than being an element in a list.

• amen sister. I never knew you felt that way. It’s nice to read. All of that “register” is overwhelming. Can’t I just be someone doing a great job.. every once in a while I really do just want to be a nameless number in a mass.

  But then.. don’t forget. You are too special to even be lost in any of those lists should you make them.

  Comment by beav — April 26, 2007 @ 2:29 am

• Yeah and anyway, the lists just make people compete on where they are in the list, not on what is actually important or useful. Never mind

  Comment by Darren — April 26, 2007 @ 8:15 am

• You’re right, being on a list means you’re towards one end or the other, there’s a natural tendency to order lists by the people that make them. Trees are the other thing you find people in and are the same as pyramids, so your management tree structure is basically a giant pyramid scheme. Maybe we need more heaps of people, that’ll sort us out.

  Comment by Rob — April 27, 2007 @ 10:29 pm