Two great list building websites to help you through the holiday season and beyond

✯ Day 343 of Vintage 365 ✯

As kids many of us quickly learn that, about this time of year, Santa Claus is - as the classic song says - making a list and checking it twice.

It's certainly fun as youngsters to think thus is the case and I still enjoy the notion that there's a mythical "good list" out there in the universe (or at least at the North Pole) that I'm trying to remain on each year.

Hop ahead to adulthood however, and the lists I'm much more preoccupied come December are the ones I make myself to help steer me productively through the endless whirl of activity that is the holiday season.

I've always been a list maker, right back to the days of when they were jotted down with crayon in the margins of my colouring books. In recent years however, for the majority of lists, I tend to use the computer.

Certainly some are written down the good old-fashioned way (most grocery lists, for example), but for the lists I create most days of the tasks I need/hope to complete before the day draws to a close once more, I do tend to turn to the handy-dandy convenience of the internet.

Specifically, this year in particular, I've been using a site called todo.ly for lists of daily tasks, and another by the name of tadalist.com to keep track of things like shopping and wish lists, as well as long term roundups of tasks to be completed over time.

Both offer what I consider to be very straightforward interfaces and features that spare you the unnecessarily complicated bells and whistles of certain online/desktop list making programs. This works well because I'm usually just interested in having a place in which to list entries and check them off (don't you adore the feeling of ticking off something on a to do list?) as each is completed.

{Like the iconic image of Santa Claus pouring over his list of children's names each December, most us also find ourselves with a mile long checklist that requires our time and attention if we're to conquer it productively over the course of this wildly busy month. Immensely lovely vintage Normal Rockwell Saturday Evening Post Christmas cover image by way of x-ray delta one on Flickr.}

 

I find that making lists helps me really focus on the tasks that most need to be completed, which isn't to say I couldn't do so without such lists, but they do provide an especially nice backbone on which to build an itemized set of jobs you need to do or items you'd like to purchase.

Writing lists is certainly anything but new, history tells us that many ancient civilizations who had written language kept lists, and I'm sure that for nearly as long as man (or woman!) has had a writing instrument and something to jot down his (or her) thoughts on, organization loving folks have been putting together lists.

With the holiday season is full, merry swing, I thought I'd mention the two lists above in case you happen to be on the hunt for a list building site or two to help steer you through the five million things nearly all of us try and get down, hopefully in as stress-free a manner as possible, this festive, wonderful time of the year.

Just remember to follow Santa's lead, check your list twice, and you should be well on your way to productively soaring through the holiday season!