Productivity Tips – Managing lists

Part of ‘trying to run my schedule and not let my schedule run me’ for 2016 includes speeding up things that I have to do every day that are time consuming, to free up more time for things that I want to do. 

I’ve always been a big list maker, but I became increasingly aware that I was writing the same things down daily, weekly, and especially when it came to things like food shopping and travel.

After moving my diary online last year, this year, I did the previously unthinkable and followed it with my lists. And frankly I’m sorry I waited so long. This from the self-confessed stationery addict.

Paperless is a brilliant app if you:

  • repeat a lot of the same things every day/week
  • find yourself carrying around heavy notebooks full of lots of different lists
  • stop every few minutes to write something else down
  • have lots of different lists – separated by Today/This Week/Don’t Forget! etc…
  • wake up in the middle of the night, go for a wee, remember something, and scribble it down in the dark in the notebook that you keep by the bed because you are a sad note taker and wake up to this: ‘sndkfksnf hjsnvksnvf cksnfkng’

The obvious bonus of this is that you are utilising something that you (probably) have close to you at all times. No more carrying heavy notebooks, no more flicking to the correct pages etc… You open the app, find your list and add/untick/tick accordingly.

It is ridiculously easy to use. Type out something in your list, and it will save it for you. When you’ve done it, you uncheck it. The genius of Paperless is that when you have checked it, it simply fades it to grey and moves it to the bottom of the list, so that if you need to add it back to your list – ie something like ‘big shop’ or ‘Dettol’, you know, things that make a regular appearance, 😉 you never have to retype it!

I check off the things that I have on my ‘Daily’ list throughout the day, and when I go to bed, I ‘re’ check what I need to do again tomorrow. Another genius part – anything you didn’t do today, moves to the top of the list so that it is front and centre the next day. I’ve added things like ‘omegas’ to my list and it has definitely helped me take them more frequently.

It is unbeatable for food shopping. There are over 150 items on my food shopping list, I may not buy them weekly, but the time saved is massive.

You can add as many lists as you can physically manage, alphabetise them or not, move them up and down or not, ad icons or not, it’s just too good if you have a lot to do, and have bought all the notebooks in the world but still found yourself coming up short.

It syncs between your phone and iPad, meaning if you come across inspiration while reading something, you can add it to your list without picking up a pen.

The only thing that it doesn’t do is let you set alarm reminders, so you have to be disciplined enough to actually look at your ‘daily’ list…

So far, so good. If you like a list and need to make a lot of them, all the time, repeatedly, maybe check this out.

Paperless: Lists + Checks is available here on iTunes. You’ll need to buy the non-Lite version for £2.29 if you want to make a lot of lists, but it’s well worth it.