12 Lists That Help You Get Things Done

At the middle of just about every personal productivity organisation are lists – GTD has it'southward context lists, Pomodoro has it'due south action inventory and daily to-practice lists, todoodlist has, well, the todoodlist, and so on.

But there are a lot of unlike kinds of lists besides your chore or to-do list that tin can aid you be more productive. Lists in full general are powerful tools – open-concluded, constantly growing, and effective at extending our memories by the vii or so things we can keep on our mind at any given time.

Some of the lists that can make y'all more productive or otherwise make life easier include:

1. Task lists: Naturally, the most obvious is the task list, a unproblematic list of things you have to practice. A running list of the tasks you have to get done tin can make your life significantly easier, provided you employ it religiously. For more information most task lists, bank check out my "Back to Basics" mail from last year.
2. Project planning: Creating a list of tasks associated with a projects can be a great way to wrap your caput around the project, equally well equally a prompt for what to practice next when you end a task. And a listing of projects will help you make sure you're keeping up with all your commitments.
3. Wish lists: A wishlist is a list of things you want to buy but don't need right away. For example, I want a new electric guitar, merely I'm non going to run out and purchase 1. When you take the coin, or the time, you tin take out your listing and see what you want most of all.
4. Grocery/shopping lists: One of my nigh effective lists is a simple ane-page listing I made of all the groceries I regularly bought, arranged in the gild I'd find them at my local store, with a few blank spaces every and so often for i-off additions. Every calendar week, I'd impress it off, cantankerous off annihilation I didn't need, and add anything that wasn't on the list, and become shopping.
5. Gift ideas: Nothing's worse than the arroyo of Christmas with no idea of what to get someone shut to y'all. Keep a list of odd, attractive, or merely-right-for-you-know-who items throughout the year to help make Christmas, birthday, and anniversary shopping less stressful.
6. Checklists: Whatever recurrent multi-step tasks – like packing for a business trip, arranging a presentation, or winterizing your home – can exist done more than easily and with fewer errors if yous write upwards a simple checklist of all the steps involved and equipment needed.
7. Reading periodical: A while back I suggested that students (and other readers) keep a reading periodical. Basically, this is a listing of books you've read with notes and adequate information to recall the text afterwards.
8. Links and logins: In these days of proliferating web applications, most everyone has dozens, if not hundreds, of websites they need to log into on a regular basis. Keeping a list of all these sites and your login info can be a lifesaver! Also, if y'all keep a listing online, you tin accept active links to each application, making a pretty useful start page.
9. Life lists: A list of your brusk- and long-term goals can be a great motivator, likewise equally a trigger listing to assistance generate new projects. I as well similar to have a list of areas of focus, the different roles that I play, each of which comes with a dissimilar set of tasks and goals.
10. Reference: Whatsoever information y'all detect yourself referring to frequently tin brand a useful list – metric conversions, file types, software registration keys, birthdays, the names of your children, whatever.
11. Logs: Broadly speaking, a log is a listing of events tied to specific dates/times. Keeping a list of your do achievements, food consumption, words written, or other set of data appropriate for your projects will help you measure out your progress as well equally identify problems (like if your output drops on certain days of the week or month, or yous seem to crave certain foods on certain days).
12. Daily summaries: A ane- or two-line summary of the twenty-four hour period's events can help to remind you of problems that arose too as how you lot dealt with them, besides as track behavioral patterns that might point to illness, conflict with certain people, or other issues.

How to Keep Track of Your Lists

All those lists seems similar a lot to juggle, doesn't it?

Really, it'south non that hard. Whether you're a committed web two.0 wonk who wants all your lists to live in the cloud, a hardcore pen-and-paper person, or a techie who'south not quite gear up to live on the Web just still, at that place are simple solutions to keep your lists handy.

Pen-and-paper: A notebook (I similar Moleskines and Moleskine knockoffs, but whatever works) tin exist easily modified to make all your lists accessible. I utilise Postal service-Information technology tabs to place different sections of my notebook, with tasks up front end and volume wishlists, gift lists, and others towards the back. A tab somewhere near the heart separates my project planning lists from my task list.

Desktop software: If you're using Outlook or Lotus Notes, y'all take a task list manager at mitt that can easily concord other kinds of lists by assigning categories to them. Other options include using a annotation-taking program like Evernote or OneNote, with a dissever notation for each list. These are easily backed upward, which is nice, plus they can exist sent to others. And they're searchable, too. And if you're a super-geek, check out Gina Trapani'south todo.txt-cli, a control-line based productivity programme – just employ contexts or projects as list types instead.

Web Applications: Any task-list manager that allows categories (Todoist is a great one, since it literally allows you to create multiple lists), or any project management application (each listing tin exist a separate project; make sure your membership level allows you to create enough projects), or most GTD apps (use contexts or projects to divide your lists, or tags if yours offers them) can be a great listing manager. For simplicity, I similar tasktoy, but any is comfortable for you.

Wikis: Wikis are excellent list direction tools. I've listed them separately considering diverse wikis run on your desktop (like TiddlyWiki, a self-contained, easy-to-use wiki) or online (try PBWorks or WetPaint). Yous'll accept to larn some simple syntax for calculation to your lists, but later on that, wikis are not hard to employ at all.

What other lists practice y'all find useful? How do you manage your lists? Tell united states al about it in the comments!

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/12-lists-that-help-you-get-things-done.html

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