As the pandemic-driven boredom continues into 2021, many of you are racking your brains to create new lists of things to do — if you’re a list-making kind of person.
My wife needs to-do lists and little missives on sticky notes to remind her of what she needs to do. I tell her she never forgets to do important things even when she doesn’t write it down, but she’s just a note type. She would put up a sticky note saying: “Don’t forget to cash in $10 million lotto ticket.”
Written reminders help to a point. We have little yellow notes stuck to cupboard doors, the refrigerator, slips of paper on the counter, side tables, bed stands. We often find them weeks or months later, often realizing we didn’t really need whatever was on the notes.
There’s a growing number of digital alternatives to take the place of paper notes. But like much of technology that seems it will organize and ease our lives, the reminder app and the calendar on your smartphone, along with the emails and texts you get reminding you to do things, all create a dizzying number of places to check to stay organized.
With sticky notes you have the advantage of putting them somewhere in your environment where you will see them. The “Clean gunk out from under fridge” sticky note on your refrigerator door will be more effective than having the reminder in one of your smartphone apps.
Whatever your to-do list technique, you’re probably looking to start a new one to get through the coming months of spending more time at home.
When the pandemic hit last spring, thousands of lists were available online to suggest activities to relieve your boredom. Most of us have checked off all of those lists and are grasping for new ideas.
While there are “10 things to do” or “50 things to do” lists, a lot of them are odd-numbered lists, like “17 creative things to do during the pandemic.”
Experts in marketing say there’s a reason for that. Using 10 sounds like a guess or that you added a few ideas onto your list just to round it out. But 17 or 37 sounds like whoever wrote the list really thought it through and just put the best ideas down.
Comedians and marketing specialists spend a lot of time talking about what numbers are the funniest — yes, we apparently have a more humorous reaction to certain numbers. Many believe odd numbers are funnier than even, and while there’s no consensus on the funniest number, 3, 7 and 37 often get the nod.
We’re rebuilding our to-do list to get through the winter. We’ve cooked and baked more new foods than ever before, including homemade bagels. The next obvious step was to try made-from-scratch cream cheese to go with them.
It was wonderful, until I realized all the cream, half-and-half and milk cost $11.50 to make a pound of cream cheese.
Maybe the start of the new list will be “find low-cost homemade cream cheese.”
If you’re redoing your own list, make it 37 items long. You might not get around to doing all of them, but maybe it’ll make you laugh every time you look at it.
Tim Krohn can be contacted at tkrohn@mankatofreepress.com or 507-344-6383.
The Link LonkFebruary 14, 2021 at 06:00PM
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37 things to do? Now that's funny - Mankato Free Press
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Funny
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