How do you maintain your various "lists"?

[OCDMike82]

Hey everyone...

How do you maintain your lists and keep them from becoming dumping grounds that almost become someday maybes. For example, I keep an "articles" list and a "Listen to" list that ends up with several things that I never end up reading or listening to, and looking at them causes anxiety because of how big they get and because I never do anything with them.

I'd love to hear suggestions.

Thx!

 

[mcogilvie]

I have a workflow where professional reading goes through a couple of stages. Some of it I only look at the title. It‘s mostly handled by a repeating ”Process Literature“ next action. Reading for a project is handled by a discrete next action, as is reading for my book club. Personal reading, like news and RSS feeds, is treated like popcorn: eat it now, it won’t be as good later. I have to say that gtd does keep me from obsessing over this. I can see the ads: gtd fights FOMO 12 different ways.

 

[Gardener]

because of how big they get and because I never do anything with them.

Are you saying that you never read/listen to anything from the lists, or just that those lists contain a lot of things that you never read/listen to, along with a few things that you do?

I don't see any problem with only acting a small fraction of the items in certain types of lists. IMO, the items go on the list to get them off your mind. It's totally fine to later decide that what looked important at the time, isn't. I only act on a small fraction of the items on my lists.

(Out of curiosity, I just went to check my "books" list, which should properly be called "books and media" list. It contains a bit over a hundred items. I deleted about fifteen of them, but I'm fine with the remaining eighty-odd just lurking there.)

If you're saying that you NEVER act on the items on these sorts of lists, I don't know if that's such a bad thing either, but it is a different issue.

 

[Oogiem]

How do you maintain your lists and keep them from becoming dumping grounds that almost become someday maybes. For example, I keep an "articles" list and a "Listen to" list that ends up with several things that I never end up reading or listening to, and looking at them causes anxiety

Problem 1- how do you maintain your lists.
I do a quarterly review where I pull things off my current lists and into Someday?maybe and vice versa. For me S/M is not a dumping ground it's a waiting room. Some things will wait forever but some come and go. I've had active projects that I work on for a while put into S/M for several months or years and then pick up again. It's a buffet not my last meal.

Problem 2- Articles or Listen to or in my personal case Books to read lists that get long. Frirst off I do not consider them urgent or critical. At my quarterly reviews I read those lists and cull whatever doesn't still interest me. No shame or regret. Just because I was interested in it X many day/months/years ago doesn’t mean I can't change my mind. So If I am sure I am not considering it any more I delete it with no regrets. OTOH I also don't really care how long my S/M Lists get. If one gets too long I find a way to subdivide it somehow. Which is why I now have about 75 different S/M lists. My books to read list started out as one huge list, but now it's morphed into 8 different lists, mostly by genre but a couple by author. Total number of Items on the combined lists aisre somewhere south of 500 books. I'm ok with that. Sure, I read a lot and fast and typically read between 75-125 books a year. So even I have more on my list than I can easily finish but I don't care. I do try once year or so to go throuh the list and be sure I delete ones I have already read or bought, ones that no longer interest me and the least interesting ones when I have a bunch in a related area of interest. It still leave a lot on the list and that's just fine.

 

[Sarahsuccess]

Hey everyone...

How do you maintain your lists and keep them from becoming dumping grounds that almost become someday maybes. For example, I keep an "articles" list and a "Listen to" list that ends up with several things that I never end up reading or listening to, and looking at them causes anxiety because of how big they get and because I never do anything with them.

I'd love to hear suggestions.

Thx!

Here is 25 seconds from David Allen that I think is relevant here:

 

[Stefan Godo]

Hey everyone...

How do you maintain your lists and keep them from becoming dumping grounds that almost become someday maybes. For example, I keep an "articles" list and a "Listen to" list that ends up with several things that I never end up reading or listening to, and looking at them causes anxiety because of how big they get and because I never do anything with them.

I'd love to hear suggestions.

Thx!

It interesting how we get anxious about the list itself, but (obviously) not of the individual NOT DONE FOR YEARS items on the list.
Delete "almost" from your first sentence and you are good to go.
Such lists are an extremely useful and reasonably objective tools for knowing ourselves. So, before deleting anything, ask yourself item-by-item "why do I want this?" (eventually several times, until you get a true answer about yourself...).

 

[mcogilvie]

Sometimes the issue is not you so much as the world changing around you. The New York Times until recently had a regular Sunday feature on easy meals to make during the week. I used to glance at the print version every week and get some ideas. Now it’s online only, along with a lot of other recipes. It‘s too much, and it’s not fun. The NYT has changed something mildly pleasurable, useful and relaxing into another exercise in managing a relentless flow of information. Of course, they are doing this because they think it will help them survive in a difficult new world for newspapers.

They are not alone. Streaming video services scour our viewing habits and try to hook us. There are regular lists of the 50 best shows on Netflix, on Amazon, et cetera. Guess what? There aren’t that many good things to watch, by whatever standard you want to apply. You don’t owe attention to them.

I remember David Allen saying that it was a signal for him to act when his reading pile fell over. Digital piles don’t fall over, and triage is more important than ever.