The cortex ofHomo sapiens allows you to store your memory and acquire new memories, passing through the hippocampus, a sort of station master which then directs them into the brain. Insufficient for the manager who, victorious, draws up his to-do list so as not to forget the essentials of the essentials. The obsession is overcome when he juggles several lists – the daily and the weekly, even the monthly, for work, and when he has another with the errands to do when he gets home, where he adds the phone calls (or WhatsApp) for parent-teacher meetings, medical appointments and various commercial sites while trying to squeeze in a sports session. Victorious? When he wakes up, after reviewing the day’s list, he is rather tempted to stop everything and go back to bed… “Working is too hard. And stealing is not beautiful”, sang Julien Clerc and Zachary Richard. However, the to-do lists should help to organize through effective memory support. Which ? In Matter and memory. Essay on the relationship between body and mind (Quadrige/PUF, 1989), Henri Bergson identified two forms of memory: that of perception and that of action.
Drawing on one’s memory as an “already experienced perception” to move on to “memory always tending towards action, sitting in the present and looking only at the future”, is the hypothesis described by the philosopher. “Of these two memories, one of which imagines and the other repeats, the second can replace the first and often even give the illusion of it. [Toutefois], the first seems to be the memory par excellence. The second, the one that psychologists usually study, is habit informed by memory, rather than memory itself.
However, the list of things to do constitutes repetitions intended to control what we imagine we can do (action), a sort of crutch so as not to forget anything. A “soft toy” which reassures, “transitional object” (projecting one’s emotions into the outside world through a fetish object which promotes the attenuation of the dissociation between the inside and the outside), concept defined by the psychologist Donald Woods Winnicott, in From pediatrics to psychoanalysis (Payot, 1989). A “sleep list” that helps calm stress and feel dopamine, this “pleasure molecule” that infuses us when we cross out a line. However, from virtuous the list can become pernicious. A dysfunction when the present collides with the past, says Bergson. The anti-stress list becomes an anxiety list if you put too many things on it, seeking to challenge yourself or even increase your goals. The fetish object to which the child “attaches with passion [‘become addicted’], Winnicott analysis [‘Objets transitionnels et phénomènes transitionnels’, dans Jeu et réalité, Gallimard, 2002]is doomed to progressive disinvestment and, as the years go by, it is not so much forgotten as relegated to limbo.” If this work is not done, we become addict. We need to move on to weaning.
“He who is frustrated in his desire is unhappy, he who falls into what he is fleeing, miserable,” analyzed the Stoic and former slave Epictetus in the 1st century AD (Epictetus’ manual). From this observation follows the possibility of establishing a “not-to-do list”, which would take the opposite view of the obese and heavy list. It is not suitable for everyone, because noting what not to do is felt either positively or negatively. What wastes time and energy allows us to refocus on the essential, but stolen moments, chance, encounters should not be forbidden. Quantifying your work, timing and priorities, yes. Create a depressing list in fashion “control addict”, No. Purify your list with a few words, for example “toothpaste”. Then add a list of “soft skills”. So integrating a new colleague is crucial for the manager. You must have reserved the meeting room, present your department as well as all the “extras” so that he has his operational equipment, take a complete tour of the current files, and tell him where his canteen card is. In “soft skills”: “foresighted, didactic, patient and turning off the cell phone”.
Last piece of advice, which answers the question of “meaning” at work: draw up a list of colleagues with whom you spend the most time. List the values that we share with them. Finally, answer this question: “Do you give most of your time to people who really match my values?” If so, exit the comforter, weaning is done.