Tips – make the most of everything

Moira Mcpartlin

I am a list maker. I don’t think I am a control freak but I know lists make my life easier. My working week, like the majority of us, is a series of routine task, but there are always extra uncompleted tasks, paltry and considerable, lurking in the corners of my life. They nibble away at me week in week out and because it is human nature to procrastinate, these jobs never get done, but their existence soured my contentment.

At the beginning of each week I make a list of a few pesky jobs and aim to complete them by the end of that week. The list should consist of mostly easy jobs and one major job. It is a common fault to be too ambitious with ‘to do lists. To prevent this I write the list on a small Post-it note. I resist the temptation to start a new list until the first list has been scrubbed. I get great satisfaction from ticking off all the little tasks and crumbling and tossing the paper Post-it when the jobs are done.
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Published by Moira Mcpartlin

Moira McPartlin’s debut novel The Incomers, published by Fledgling Press in 2012, was shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award. Over the next seven years Moira wrote her speculative fiction, Sun Song Trilogy novels (also published by Fledgling Press). The novels, set in 2089, reflect many issues we face today. Moira’s last novel, Before Now: Memoir of a Toerag, is written entirely in the Fife dialect and was published by her own imprint, Trilleachan Press, in May 2021. In 2021 she became a writing fellow at Hawthornden Castle. In 2022 she was appointed the Scriever for The Federation of Writers (Scotland), and in 2024 was the recipient of a Bridges Award, a residency at Cove Park, Argyll. Her short stories and poetry have been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies. Moira’s latest publication, A Thing So Delicate: The Hidden Voices of Scotland’s Mass Concrete Viaducts, is a collaboration with her husband, Colin. It is a hybrid about the social history surrounding the building of Scotland’s Victorian mass concrete viaducts. This includes creative nonfiction, prose, poetry, and photography. Moira is listed on the Scottish Book Trust Live Literature Database.

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