People are keeping their lists online -- and it's gone beyond the to-dos. MEGAN SCOTT tallies up our need to enumerate every little accomplishment.
Books of lists, but not THE Book of Lists. (AP Photo/Hillary Rhodes)
Grocery list. Errands list. To-do list. Wish list.
More than 80 percent of people keep lists, according to a poll conducted by Zogby International.
Address list. Phone list. Guest list. Goals list.
"Lists are the defining organizing principle of the 21st century," says Barbara Ann Kipfer, who writes books in -- you guessed -- list format, including "14,000 things to be happy about," "The wish list," and "8,789 words of wisdom."
Foods to eat. Songs to download. Shows to TiVo.
"In the era of Google, Wikipedia, BlackBerrys, iPods, and TiVo, there is too much information and content and not enough time," Kipfer says.
Medications. Allergies. Surgeries.
And the lists go on.
Online, that is.
LIST FOR ALL THE WORLD TO SEE
Leave it to the Internet to create a frenzy out of something as methodical and personal as a list.
There's Backpackit.com, Meosphere.com, Gubb.net, to name a few. And people are editing and creating more than 2,700 separate lists for WikiLists, essentially a list of lists.
"There are people who are running their daily lives on Gubb -- from personal goals, fitness goals to soccer practice," says Josh Weinstein, co-founder of the free listmaking Web site. "We have a lot of people who are using it to plan their weekly shopping list. We have teachers using it to keep track of their students."
Soccer practice is one thing. But "Things You've Flown On?" "The Cars You've Owned?"
Meosphere.com boasts more than 2,000 lists with categories, such as "Animals You've Eaten," "Natural Disasters You've Survived," "Ben and Jerry's Dearly Departed Flavors You've Tried."
Of course, you can also keep regular lists, but who would want to read that?
Registration is free (ads pay for the site). You can peruse the lists and check things off that you've done -- or add things you want to do. You can also put pins on a map to show the locations of places you've been, streets you've crossed, the locations of restaurants you've been to.
"Meosphere is who you are," says Eric Eliason, founder of Meosphere.com, which went live in March. "The Meosphere that you create -- once you check all these off -- is your experience DNA. You have your DNA, but then this defines who you are as well."
A LIST REVOLUTION?
Eliason declined to reveal the number of users (he's waiting until it reaches 100,000, so we know it's less than that).
He showed asap some snazzy features: Users can do a side-by-side comparison of their lists; view their lists in a graph or diary format, email their meosphere to friends or post a 'See my meosphere' widget on their social networking Web site, blog or personal site.
Weinstein says there are tens of thousands of users on Gubb, which went live three months ago. It allows users to send their list as a text message to a cell phone.
Coming soon: the "g" icon, so someone can click on it and receive special offers related to the items on their list, whether it's movies, trips or wedding plans.
"It allows people to realize this vision of self-improvement by giving people a place to keep their lists in a secure environment," says Weinstein. "It gives them a degree of calm."
But couldn't creating all these lists make you crazy? Nah -- list-making is harmless, says Traci Woods, a Los Angeles psychologist.
After all, it can be fun to think about all the cars you've owned. And for some people, making a list motivates them.
"I would only worry about people who have compulsive tendencies," she says. "This is definitely something that can spin out of control."
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Megan Scott is an asap reporter based in New York.
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