Home › Blogs › Merlin's blog ›

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.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

in

I absolutely love this idea....

Submitted by Mike (not verified) on August 24, 2005 - 10:04am.

I absolutely love this idea. I am a huge fan of the good old fashioned .txt file. I always have bits and pieces of crap I want to save, URLs, quotes, article texts, stories, whatever. This would be a great way to keep track of this - sort of a running history file.

This also fits into another neat idea, the idea that someone else can retrieve your stuff if you’re killed in a horrible Bird Flu epidemic.

I’m going to start one of these tonight and I’m never going to stop using it.

For a text editor, I think I like Notetab Pro the best. It handle’s HUGE text files, it has a nice spell checker, some good text statistics, its cheap (Light is free), and its super fast.

One problem I will have to figure out is a way to run this remotely. Either I’ll have to do the thumb drive idea (although my POS laptop only has one USB jack) or I’ll have to find a good way to keep it remotely. I’ll think of something =)

Great idea, I love it. Thanks for posting!!

Mike Shea mike@mikeshea.net