Listomaniac

One of my favorite blogs, Stereogum, uses the term "Listomania" to organize music they like that week--the term has also come to mean "annoying behavior at a music festival" (via Urbandictionary), but I like to think of the term as follows:

Listomania (n): The state of being consumed by lists.

The past few weeks, I have been what I would call a Listomaniac.  Aside from keeping all of my assignments, meetings, and dates organized by day in my paper notebook, I tend to break my days down into hourly regiments. For example, today looks like:

9:40 am - 1 pm: Class
2 pm - Meeting with Anna Gonzalez (canceled)
2-3 pm - Blood ch. 5, 6
3-4 pm - Gym
4:30 pm - FSU Coordinators Meeting
5 pm - Student Media Board meeting

And so on...

On busy days especially, it is helpful to break my day down like this just so I can see everything that I have to do; it is organized linearly so it is really easy to see what should come before and after. In stressful situations, it all comes down to planning for me. And to make this week before spring break go as smoothly as possible, I've been breaking things down quite a bit.

This past weekend, though, a new element was introduced into my obsession with keeping things organized. I downloaded a beautiful little app called "Wunderlist."

Given caption: "Wunderlist is here to help you get things done. Whether you're planning an overseas adventure, sharing a shopping list with a loved one or simply keeping track of your daily to-dos."

 Wunderlist is great because it takes all of my scraps of paper that have lists on them and puts them in the center of my universe--my smart phone. Normally, I am a huge proponent of everything paper, but it's nice to have something in my pocket reminding me what I need to do all of the time.

And the interface itself is pretty easy to use. You have a page that displays all of your lists, and then from there you can explore what you have to do based on how you categorize them. I've got lists for School, my "Private" life, The Pioneer Log, a Shopping list... etc.

They include some lists for you--I haven't had time to update "Movies to Watch."

Here's what my "Week" looks like (be assured there is much, much more):

Below, you'll see an example of a list within a list (a meta list?). My Mom is coming next week, so I've got to clean my house. As you can imagine, there's tons to do, so I've created a sublist with different tasks that I need to complete in order to "check off" "Clean the house!"

Sublist feature.

I don't take my Moleskine planner with my everywhere I go--but I do take my phone. And I've noticed with Wunderlist that it's harder for me to procrastinate. I wake up, check my phone, and see what I have to do. It is in my face and I can't ignore it! You can also set reminders and due dates, at which point your phone will "ding" and an icon will appear in the top left that let's you know you've got something due.

I'm still tooling around with the app, but I'm excited about the potential for me. I am currently working on a list of places I want to go in Seattle, which I'm going to send to my Mom before she gets here. I hope to make lists for specific classes instead of just a master, "School" list. Wunderlist also has an online feature, a browser extension, and an app you can download to your computer itself, all of which will sync to the app on your phone.

As someone who needs constant reminder of what I need to do, this app is perfect for me. While I do enjoy writing my assignments down and having written record of them, it is extremely helpful to have a reminder everywhere I go.

And I know what you're thinking--that this seems insane and that I should probably slow down and take time for myself but I do a lot. Keeping my activities organized is imperative for me to complete them in a quality and efficient way.  Which isn't strong suit...

Not quite the picture of efficiency.

While this app seems very inward, I think that it has the potential to foster community. The ability to share lists is awesome, and as I get deeper into the app, I may even try to convince people I work with to consider getting it so that we can share! I will slowly turn everyone I know into a Listmaniac--watch out y'all.