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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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One weakness of your apparently...

Submitted by nickel (not verified) on August 15, 2005 - 6:10am.

One weakness of your apparently all-electronic approach to this is that you thumb drive isn’t going to be very helpful when you’re standing in the store trying to remember what kind of vacuum cleaner bag you need. I like the idea of capturing this stuff on your computer, but it’s equally important to be able to recall these things regardless of where you are and what kind of gadgets you have available. And I agree with piers that DEVONthink works well for this… I just need to remember to print it out periodically and haul it with me.

cheers, nickel