To do, to leave and to frog (yes, you read that right): The three lists you need to make this week

If you’re anything like us, your inbox and social feeds are starting to fill up with advice on making New Year’s resolutions and how to plan for 2020. It can all be a bit overwhelming and demoralising – especially if you have a track record of making elaborate pledges to run marathons, learn Mandarin, climb mountains or rescue and rehabilitate three-legged orphaned alpacas (which you genuinely believe you might do when you’re popping the Champagne cork at midnight, but have never actually followed through on in the cold light of day). There are people who do those things. But if you’re not one of them (and that’s okay to admit), then this is the blog for you.

We were watching a webinar at the end of last week that mentioned three things the presenter does to get organised before the end of the year – it was framed in a professional context, focusing on getting your ducks in a row at the office before the Christmas break, but it applies just as well to other areas of life too. Plus it mentions frogs, which are both cool and cute.

1. What MUST you do before the end of the year?

This list isn’t the place for your alpaca orphanage plans – this is where you pick the handful of things that simply have to be completed before you sashay out of 2019. Year-end reports? Yes. Non-negotiable legal and financial obligations? Yes. Googling ‘Best place to farm alpacas in Surrey’? No.

1. What stuff can you LEAVE until next year?

If it hasn’t made your first list, then it’s probably going to be on this one. (Until you read the third option.) This list is the place for all those things you definitely want to do, but that can realistically wait until 2020. If you’re feeling super organised and have a lovely new calendar you want to fill up with colour-coded activities and appointments (is that just us?), then you can give each one of the things on this list a date in 2020 you intend to tackle it. But that’s an optional extra. Once you’ve got your list, stick it in a drawer - it can take a back seat until the New Year.

1. What can you FROG entirely?

Okay, there are probably quite a few of you who have only read this far to find out what the diyu (that’s hell in Mandarin) we’re on about with the frog thing. So - the webinar presenter told us she’s an avid knitter. In the knitting community, to ‘frog’ means to remove your knitting needles from what you’re working on and pull out all the stiches so you can reuse the yarn. You have to rip it, rip it, rip it, ribbit, ribbit. Hence the name! Cool, hey? It means to bin a piece of work entirely as it’s just not worth finishing. We definitely all have a few frogs under our number 2 list – is there something on there you’ve been putting off for months or longer? Would it really make any difference if you never did it? What would feel really satisfying to frog right at the end of the year and say goodbye to forever? Everyone should have at least one frog to end the year!

I double checked that frogging was a real thing before I wrote this blog – just in case the webinar lady was a very convincing fantasist - and I also came across the knitting term ‘to tink’. It means to go back and undo a small part of your work to fix a mistake. (‘Tink’ is ‘knit’ backwards.) So if you take just one thing away from this blog, it should be that knitting is front and centre in pleasing hobby-specific slang.

We’re off to get frogging (and join a knitting circle). We hope you have a peaceful and contented Christmas and look forward to sharing more of our thoughts with you in 2020. Merry Christmas and happy New Year! Ribbit.