Character Jonathan Souweine is a lawyer who, with his wife Judith, has commissioned a house to be built.
"[Jonathan] is their organizational genius ... His principal tool is the list. If he has a great deal to do tomorrow, as he almost always does, he cannot sleep until he records his obligations in a list. He pulls lists out of pockets, drawers, briefcase. He has some ready-made lists. There's one for a camping trip with children and one for a trip without them. He's devised a kind of list that ameliorates procrastination: If he has a difficult chore of high priority and just can't bring himself to face it right away, he makes a list of this thirteen other chores of secondary significance, in the order of their relative importance. So while he puts off the big job, he still manages to attend to his second and third most important ones."
–– Tracy Kidder (b. 1945), American writer
Source: Tracy Kidder. House. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985; p.12.
