Academic reveals why women love making lists… while men just want to tick things off
- Women find list making ‘pleasurable’ as it means they can complete lots of tasks
- Men think lists are outcome-related and want to do everything on them
For many of us, there are few things more satisfying than ticking off tasks on a ‘to-do’ list.
But new research has shown that women enjoy list-writing far more than men – as it helps them to multitask.
A team from the London University School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) revealed that women find the activity ‘pleasurable’ as it means they can complete the ‘unbelievable’ number of tasks they undertake day-to-day.
Dr Joanna Nolan, from SOAS, said this enables their male partners to appreciate how much ‘unseen’ work they have done.
By contrast, ‘functional’ men don’t enjoy making lists – they simply want to tick everything off.
Dr Joanna Nolan said: ‘Both men and women make lists – but women make them with more enthusiasm. For men perhaps, it’s more functional – there’s a purpose to it. It’s more outcome-related, they want to do everything on the lists. Whereas women are interested in the actual making of the list’ (stock photo)
The linguist said she noticed how men and women approach lists differently when she conducted research for her book, Listful.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Dr Nolan said: ‘Both men and women make lists – but women make them with more enthusiasm.
‘For men perhaps, it’s more functional – there’s a purpose to it. It’s more outcome-related, they want to do everything on the lists.
‘Whereas women are interested in the actual making of the list.’ Ms Nolan said her that during her research, whenever she asked a woman about lists ‘their eyes would light up’.
She added: ‘They would get all excited and they would want to talk for so long, or exchange emails for so long on such an extended basis about their lists, their list-making habits, why lists are so important to them, how they couldn’t live without their lists.
‘We [women] take pleasure in our lists, not only because we are trying to make sure that we don’t miss any of the unbelievable number of tasks that we feel we have to achieve but also because we want the record that we can refer back to.’
Ms Nolan spoke about a friend who reads out her to-do list to her husband every morning.
She said: ‘He will say invariably to her, “Why are you telling me this?”. And she will think, it’s because otherwise, you might not acknowledge quite how much I am doing that goes unseen.’
A team from the London University School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) revealed that women find the activity ‘pleasurable’ as it means they can complete the ‘unbelievable’ number of tasks they undertake day-to-day (stock photo)
Artist Alice Instone has extensively researched lists for exhibitions and noted a key difference between men’s and women’s list-making habits.
She said: ‘I did find a big difference between men’s lists and women’s lists. Again, I found that women make a lot more lists than men. I thought it was maybe to do with this multi-tasking problem we have.’
Ms Instone added: ‘I’m not someone who’s good at multi-tasking, which is why I think I write so many lists.
‘And it’s the fact that we are looking after our children, and sometimes our parents and we are often the ones that write thank you letters – or invite people for supper.
‘We are looking after the pets, and combining this with our work, and housework and the repairs. It’s having things in so many different areas, it’s very hard to remember it all.
‘That was what was so strongly inflected in the women’s lists, is this complete wide spectrum of tasks that people are doing,’ she added.
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