The list

What will be the only thing me and an Uber self-driving car’s computer will have in common except providing a transportation service?

As I park in front of a condo building waiting for the next passenger, I browse through my notebook and see a lot of lists. This is what we’ll have in common. Lists. The final deliverer of order in this chaotic world: the list.

I make many lists:

The list of things to-do in a day.

The list of passengers I transport around Toronto.

The list of deliverable for my clients.

My bucket list of things I’ve done and I’ll do in the future to make my life a fully lived adventure.

The list of my friends’ birthdays for this month. Nee! I don’t have this list, but Facebook keeps one for me.

The list of lists I don’t keep is even longer.

It feels good to create lists. It gives you certainty. You’re in control. Just looking at a list on piece of paper or a computer screen gives you a warm feeling inside.

It’s there. The list. You got this! Until you don’t.

It’s something I’m struggling with lately: execution.

I’ve got good at planning. It’s half the battle. I can make sense of and see patterns in most human activates or business needs. My lists or project plans are a pleasure to look at and easy to read and understand. Once a list gets into production, my inner war is on. No matter how good the people I work with are, no matter how easy the project, there is always the what-if-something-goes-wrong worm digging through my brain.

I should let it go. I know better than to let myself hunted by my own doubts. Identifying the part which is my tendency to control everything versus the one related to my emotional investment into a project is hard work.

You know what happened with this struggle I have about my involvement in the execution phase of things on my list?

It became an item. It went on top of a new to-do list.

Short disclaimer: The Journal of an Uber Driver is a work of fiction.
Long disclaimer: The literary exercise to define a nowadays character for a novel led me to create these 25 blog posts. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Any opinion expressed about Uber should not be interpreted as having a negative connotation. I admire the company as an incumbent of the platform economy and I am a registered Uber driver for research purposes.