The girl spent a lot of time planning.

She started by planning out the planning and planning when the best time might be for such

planning. Then she showed others the planning: online and under the label ‘productivity

content’. This attracted an audience of other girls, who plaited their hair, drank peppermint

tea and engaged in ‘dark academia’. If you asked an academic for the definition of this darker

version of their life, they couldn’t tell you. The girls seemed to think it meant the books they

should read were old and bound with leather covers.

Nonetheless, the girls listened, clean ears at the ready. They longed for her lists and her

listing tips and listing techniques. Should one list in the morning, or at night? Would a list be

more useful when written on branded paper, RRP £8.99 from the girl’s own website, or

would a post-it do? Should one’s lists be timed and if so, by the minute or the second? How

many hours are enough to stop the feeling that you can never do enough? If your house burnt

down, would you be excused from the list’s firm grip, least for enough time for you to pluck

your pencil from the ash?

The girl liked planning. She planned everything - from her meals, to her sleep, to when and

how long for she might be awarded a ‘break’, which of course was not a real break as she had

planned for it, and if she planned her relaxation then it would be productive relaxation. On

Sundays she planned a half hour break to watch television, though she did find it tricky to get

anything profound from the television in only thirty minutes. Her favourite things to watch

were David Attenborough documentaries because they always said something about the state

of the world.

The girl was going to do something with her life you see. She was smart. The sort of

intelligence that expensive schools handed out in glittery party bags. She practised the

‘Pomodoro Technique’ and when she wasn’t practising pomodoros she was quietly crying in

the bathroom because her brain had turned inwards on itself. Sometimes she got horrible

thoughts about how her hair was the wrong sort of shade and her legs the wrong type of

shape. But the girl was smart enough to rationalise that this was nonsensical thinking. So she

goes back to observing the Ancient Egyptians and their unusual rituals instead.

Sometimes she has night terrors, where she is a puppeteer with no arms. It is terrifying but

they are simply night terrors and so she ignores the bags under her eyes and practises

gratefulness. There is no point becoming someone like her Aunt Sophia, who has just turned

forty and is falling apart from every angle.

‘I need to get a grip’, she often laughs, as if grips are lying in the street or hiding between

discounted fabrics in Topshop sale racks.

Middle-aged women constantly seem to be trying to find these grips, like the bobby pins from

their youth which were like rare gold dust, hiding beneath drawers and under piles of

crumpled clothes. The girl does not want to be like Sophia - dismantled and fragmented,

constantly trying to stick herself back together.

Her day starts at 6am. Meditation and oats, fresh socks and cloth laid out the night before.

The daily list: re-written. You see, whilst there is already a pre-prepared list, lists have the

capacity to be deviant tricksters. They may need adjusting; after all no matter how much you

have planned the plans, life may not have paid attention to your scented paper and cursive

headings.

Researching various planning methods throughout history has taught the girl all she knows:

strategic, tactical, operational, contingency, the elevator analogy, the hare and the tortoise or

is it the tortoise and the hare, anyway it must relate somehow. It all comes back to planning at

the end of the day.

‘If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's

success’, James Cameron. This is written at the top of the daily list in big calligraphy swirls.

Below are fifteen bullet points and twenty three sub categories, divided and categorized using

numerous highlighters and coloured ballpoints.

The first task of the day:

1. Second read of ‘Global Feelings: How Geography Influences Emotion and Cognitive

   Abilities Within Individuals’

-  Re-highlight old highlights to reabsorb crucial information 

- Annotate with RED pen to improve memory retrieval

She gets to work.

Of course the girl exercises often, to keep her brain fresh - everything she reads suggests

exercise is a worthwhile pastime. And she cooks too, recipes featuring wholegrains and good

morals. She prepares little pockets of nuts and dried fruit in carefully portioned bowls and

leaves them in her room in order to optimise eating efficiency. Sometimes she wonders if she

is doing things just because she perceives them as the right things to do, or if she is doing

things to be perceived in a certain way. Then the perceiving all gets too much so she makes a

herbal tea.

Occasionally, life catches the girl by surprise. Her cat gets run over, no amount of therapy

can stop her fear of flying or needles, her parents fall out of love, her grandmother dies

choking on fish - fish of all things! Life doesn’t seem to want to follow her plans. She is so

tired. So she buys supplements and re-usable eye masks and vitamins, but eco-friendly ones

that she can post online without receiving any comments on anonymous hate forums like,

“She doesn’t practise what she preaches, loooool spoilt brat. Hypocrisy AND she’s got a

saviour complex to boot. Privileged.”

She recognises scrunched up inside her a deep desire to be perfect and compactable. The

planning makes her feel like she has the upper hand - but over who, or what, she cannot seem

to understand.

At 10pm she switches off. Social media shows her friends of friends of friends dancing in

tight dresses, little stomachs poking out, nights of vodka coke and silly tears in nightclub

loos. But that is not her life. In her life it’s time for cold water and a coming of age novel. She

thinks,

‘I could do both’ and for a moment there is a pause, a break in the list, a break in the plan, a

break where maybe -

She remembers she is going to be the best: successful and in control. Plus alcohol makes her

sleepy. She turns off the light.