Check his wishlist before you panic-buy for Father's Day

Father's Day is on Sunday and you have nothing. Before you order a tie or a "World's Best Dad" mug, find out whether your dad keeps a wishlist online. If he does, the hard part is already done.

Nobody knows what your dad wants better than your dad. Surprises are overrated; a man who opens the exact torque wrench he asked for is a happy man. When he took the time to create a wishlist, he handed you the answer, and ignoring it to guess is a strange kind of stubbornness.

What is usually on the list

A father's wishlist tends to be a mix. A couple of books he keeps meaning to read, a gadget that would make the fishing or the bike maintenance easier, and the practical things he has been putting off for himself: a new belt, decent secateurs, a replacement for the phone charger held together with tape. It is all there, waiting for someone else to press buy.

Finding the list if you do not have the link

Search your email for a link he shared around a past birthday or Christmas. Ask your mother or a sibling; someone in the family usually has it. Failing that, ask him. "Do you still have that wishlist?" is a perfectly normal question, and most fathers would far sooner be asked than receive a third pair of novelty socks.

Shopping the list well

Skip the cheapest item unless it is the one you would have chosen anyway. Look at the most recent additions; those are the things he wants right now, as opposed to the drill bits he added two years ago and forgot about. Reserve the item on the list so a sibling does not buy the same thing. He will not see who reserved what, so the surprise holds.

Two small items often make one better gift. A hand grinder and a bag of single-origin beans sitting on the list separately become a coffee set when they arrive together. Same money, and it looks like you thought about it.

If the list is all practical and no fun

Some fathers fill the list with tools and necessities and nothing that could be called a treat. That tells you he rarely buys himself anything nice. Take the practical item and go up a level: the basic work gloves become leather ones, the €12 phone charger becomes a proper charging stand for the bedside table, the supermarket whisky becomes a bottle of Lagavulin. He is still getting what he asked for, in the version he would never have picked for himself.

Running out of time

Check whether the item is available for next-day delivery, click and collect, or from a shop in town you can walk into on Saturday. If he reads or listens to audiobooks, a digital gift lands by email within a minute. A year of a podcast app or an audiobook subscription is a real present, and it never gets stuck at a depot.

If nothing will arrive on the day, write an IOU: a photo of the item and a note saying when it is coming. A father who knows a new fishing reel is on its way spends the whole week looking forward to it, which is more than most wrapped gifts manage.

If your family has none of this set up, now is a good moment to change that. Anyone can create a wishlist in a few minutes, and next June you will be reading it in May.