Your heart just skipped a beat when you saw the title to this article, didn't it? No need to feel shameful about your...er, habit. As vices go, gobbling up Top 10 lists earns you a luminescent green halo compared to some of the other pastimes that you might choose to indulge in. At least you're flexing your cerebral muscles in honor of momma nature, so go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back. It's okay. "Hmmm," you're thinking to yourself, "This is an angle that I've never seen before. Must read now. Spreadsheet and mousey colleague's peering eyes be damned." And so, with hopes high and paperwork pushed off to the side of your desk, you read on.

So let's get to the nitty gritty core of the matter, shall we? How many times have you logged onto www.treehugger.com, www.greenwala.com or some other green-themed virtual stomping ground, only to scan the list of articles and pounce on the one with the number and the word "Top" in the title. We're all friends here. It's okay to reveal your weakness for handy-dandy how-to lists. Such clever little guides are our eco-minded society's lifeblood -- the yin to your eager greenie yang. One has to wonder, however, why the "Top 10" prefix wins us over time and time again? Are these guides really all that and a bag of chips...or are they fulfilling a formula that renders us as in control of our thoughts and free will as a ball of Silly Putty?  I beg of you...please resist the Top 10 tractor beams and judge this article for its content, not the amount of numbers running down the margin!!

Without Further Ado, I Give You The Hotly Anticipated "Top 10 Reasons Why Greenies Are Addicted To 'Top 10 How To Be Greener' Lists" List:

1) Um, hasn't anyone told you that greenie profiling is totally uncool? Everyone from here to Timbuktu is addicted to Top 10 lists no matter their creed, environmental leanings or affinity for granola, so howz about editing out the "Greenies" part of your title, Ms. Leigh. Seems like a certain unnamed writer needs to attend a tolerance class or diffuse their pent up frustrations (ahem...prejudice) elsewhere. Jeesh.

2) I must nourish my infinite Twitter followers with fresh green meat come hell or high water. Gotta show everyone how I'm totally on the pulse of what's going on in the world of wickedly cool cutting edge green tips. No one can ever find out where I get my rad pool of green goodness. EVER. It sure does take a lotttt of time to hunt down worthwhile lists, but achieving eco-Twitter supremacy is not for the faint of heart. Sleep is for sissy greenies...no, sissy weenie greenies. 

3) Maybe I'm not being green enough. There's got to be a more effective way to reach a greener level of green...maybe chartruese...no, what's an even more visually shocking tone of green -- acid? Even though I already recycle every scrap of paper and candy wrapper and blade of grass that passes through my hands, I'm always on the lookout for new, improved or never before heard of ideas to take it to the next level. Plus, there's just got to be a better way to make the most of belly button lint.

4) Lemme see if I can stick it to the greenie blogger. I'll show 'em who the real expert is. I don't feel compelled to blather on about my uber greenosity in blog posts like they do, but I am soooo much more qualified than they are. Ha! Let me just Google their topic and locate one slight commonality between what they wrote and what someone else posted 7 years ago and then attempt to publicly humiliate them in the comments section!  Weeeee, this is the highlight of my life!

5) If I can read it, I can achieve it! I'm all about goals. Living a green lifestyle is really important to me and easy-to-follow lists help me to stay on task. I feel like I can achieve a lot more when I am able to refer to tips that might not have occurred to me otherwise. Top 10 articles take the guesswork out of reducing my carbon footprint and help me to do right by Mother Nature 365 days a year. Plus, I wouldn't even know where to start if I tried to put together my own list.

6) I need a little inspiration to stay the course. I'm a greenie by choice but lately I've been losing my oomph...maybe it's work, maybe I'm just stuck in a rut. The one saving grace for me is that a little lightbulb goes off inside my brain when I find friendly and upbeat green lifestyle advice. For me, reading another perspective, one that outlines concise and simple techniques to make greener choices, is always a guaranteed mood booster.

7) I need to absolve myself of my friend's crimes against momma nature. All of my friends and their friends' friends are stuck in a landfill-belching-vortex of time and space. They still continue partying like it's 1999 even though Prince has publicly renounced them as eco-heathens and personally biked to all of their homes to demand copies of Purple Rain (in vinyl, cassette and cd format) back. You don't wanna mess with Prince when he's pissed off. Mommy!

8) I need to absolve myself of my own crimes against momma nature. I'd rather not get into the really nitty gritty details, but suffice it to say that during a very low moment in my recent history, I somehow got caught up in a seductive cloud of entirely unsustainable flaming high fructose corn syrup-n-Pixie Stix shots, White Castle sliders, ears of conventionally raised GMO corn and Hummer lowriding. Splitting headache and surprise tattoo of Tom Cruise jumping the couch aside, a little "Easy Greening In 5 Simple Steps" is precisely what the doctor ordered to slap my inner psyche back into sensibility...along with a tetanus shot.

9) It's way better than sitting in front of the boob tube. The comments alone are worth the price of admission. No matter what "Top 10 Green _________" I read, at least one to two wisenheimers come out of the woodwork to challenge the author, or in an effort to reveal their illustrious ignorance, they announce that they've just voted the article down or decided that it was the worst piece of literature since that frickin' Shakespeare dude. 'Nuff said.

10) Top 10 Greenie lists validate our collective desire to change the world. What most people may not realize is that a top secret pool of elite and highly prolific eco-writers are entrusted with the task of perpetually cranking out such classics as "Top 10 Best Ways To Grow Your Own Nuts" (PG rated, of course) and "Top 10 Ways To Whisper Sweet Nothings To Your Compost Pile" in an effort to soothe the savage greens. If these bite sized morsels of leafy goodness were to take a 7 day cruise to the Bahamas, the very notion of law and order would be rocked to its core. Revolution would occur and, I fear, Al Gore might somehow be usurped from his goodnatured green giant status. Restless people have to blame someone, right. Anyway, we don't ever want to let it come to that. These easy-breezy guides are the glue that holds all greenies together. They remind us that we're not alone in our quest to help, repair and even rejuvenate our ailing Earth. As we scooch up to our computers to read the latest, greatest greenie guide, we can't help but recognize that we are in the virtual company of hundreds of thousands of other greenies who we may never meet face to face, but they're walking alongside of us as we make efforts great and small to chip away at our eco-challenges.