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David Allen: Handy lists to maintain

Submitted by Merlin on August 14, 2005 - 9:23am.

The David Allen Company [Cool/convenient lists to have]

David Allen’s suggestions for lists that are handy to keep around.

A few of my favorite ideas of his:

  • Might wanna buy… - could be one mega-list, or (more commonly) grouped by the type of thing it is: cds, cigars, wines, books, videos
  • Might wanna do when… - possibilities when you’re in a certain location or doing a certain activity. By city, country, or region (things to do/think about when I’m in Napa Valley, London, Santiago.) Or by activity (Web surfing places to visit.)
  • Quotes - “Cool Quotes - where I can jot down quotations I come across that I like.” (Joel Millican)
  • Restaurants - for business or pleasure, to review for ideas instead of same-old same-old.
  • Style or product numbers I may need when I’m buying things - oil filter, vacuum cleaner bags, labeler cassettes, etc.

I have many of these myself and more (broken stuff, skills to learn, personal Oblique Strategies, etc.), all kept in plain text, natch, which makes it easy to quickly append to them with Quicksilver.

I then sync all my text files to a thumbdrive every week or so. Provides a quick backup as well as a nice way to have emergency access when I’m away from my own computer.

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Whenever I drink a bottle...

Submitted by piers (not verified) on August 14, 2005 - 8:51pm.

Whenever I drink a bottle of wine, I take a photo of it, add it to iPhoto and the keyword “wine”, and give the photo a star-rating, according to how good the drop was. I have a smart album of all photos tagged with wine. This helps me remember which bottles I should seek out again and which are duds. Every time I add a new photo, I review the old ones. I invented this system because when I’m at the liquor store, I can usually remember what I’ve drunk before, but not whether it was any good… if I had an iPod photo, the system would work even better.