First things first

Sharing lists shows we all have our priorities in order

In a crisp, clean office, Danielle Walquist swivels in her chair to answer the phone. The space is meticulously organized, from the spiral notebooks that line her shelves to the contents of a tall, black filing cabinet in the corner.

At Northeastern's School of Architecture, Walquist, 36, manages everything from student inquiries to the needs of 10 full-time faculty members to the budget. She takes night classes at the university and works another job for a Web-based directory of Boston. Back home in Malden, she has an 11-year-old son.

"It's tough to keep things straight sometimes," she admits. Then, she reaches for her lynchpin: a stack of yellow sticky notes at the corner of her desk. "I can't even tell you how many I write a day - between five and 15, at least."

In her world of ever-changing priorities, where a phone call or an e-mail could spark a new and complicated project, Walquist is one of a growing number of Americans who identify themselves as list makers. "It's a way to keep things at the front of my brain," she says. "Otherwise, it'll just be in one ear and out the other."

It would be impossible to count the people who make lists every day - those who live and die by the dash marks of their to-dos, or keep track in their notebook margins of countries they'd like to visit sometime. But in a 21st-century swirl of information, ideas, and opportunities, lists don't just belong to FranklinCovey anymore - they belong to everyone.

Websites like RememberTheMilk and ToDoist have popped up to offer convenient systems for keeping track. Ta-Da List boasts more than 4 million user-made lists. A cursory Google search reveals pages of links to new sticky note widgets, desktop calendars, and list-making software. Quirky online vendor WorldWideFred even started to sell temporary to-do list tattoos, complete with a washable gel-ink pen. Dozens of books of lists have been published to help readers visit the most important places in the world, watch the most important movies, and hear the most important albums before they die. Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art even has lists in its permanent collection: Kelly Sherman's "Wish Lists" is made up of 40 such lists she found on the Internet.

"We're living in the era of the list," says Josh Peterson, CEO of the Seattle-based company The Robot Co-op and a founder of 43Things.com, a website where people keep track of their life goals. "There is so much information that we have to scan and move on."

Hundreds of thousands of people visit 43Things every day, to browse other people's "life lists" or to work on their own. They strive to run marathons, watch movies alone, or de-clutter.

Peterson believes that by compiling lists, people set their lives in motion.

"Most people are sleepwalking on some track, and so this 'life list' - I think why it resonates with our users - is a chance to really document things that are important," he says. "To decide, what kind of life do I want to have?"

But Gabriele Oettingen, a psychology professor at NYU who studies how people turn their fantasies into reality, warns against leaving your hopes on paper.

"If people put down all their wishes on a list, it could almost work as a substitute for having them already done, and then it might actually hurt," she says. Instead, she says to subject goals to "mental contrasting" by acknowledging obstacles that stand in the way so you can tackle them.

Then, Oettingen suggests an if-then plan, based on work from another NYU professor, Peter Gollwitzer. "The idea is, 'If I encounter an obstacle, then I will act in a goal-directed way,' " she says. "You know what the obstacle is . . . so once the obstacle occurs, you automatically act to overcome it. And then you don't need to decide anymore if you need to put your running shoes on - you just do it."

For some, like Walquist, lists are all business, with no sentimental undertone. But for Lisa Nola, author of "Listography Journal" and cofounder of Listography.com, lists mean more than moving toward the future: They help remember the past.

"Some people say it's obsessive, or I'm clinging, or too nostalgic," she says. "But when you know that your memory is going to fade, and you're going to lose these things, you just want to keep them for yourself."

In her book, people can record the places they've lived, whom they'd like to sleep with, or the names of their pets; Nola invented all the lists.

"Listing is this way to honor something," she says. "So if you create a list of your favorite high school memories, or about your grandmother, you're honoring that time or that person by creating this little monument for it."

For Irina Rasputnis, a 27-year-old engineer from Somerville, lists mark progress. She's been listing for more than 10 years and says her technique has evolved. Each of her Moleskine notebooks has a table of contents and is laid out like a real book. Systematically she has eliminated the least practical lists. In tiny, impeccable handwriting, she draws a one-year calendar at the front of each and keeps track of her spending habits.

Amid more run-of-the-mill lists, Rasputnis annually produces a five-year plan, then turns the page; she doesn't consult this list on the path to accomplishing her goals, but uses it as a time-capsule of sorts.

"The list is this wonderful abstraction - it's perfectly adaptable," says Robert Belknap, author of "The List: The Uses and Pleasures of Cataloguing." "We've never exhausted it, it doesn't get old. There are so many possible permutations and shapes and kinds and features and purposes that it seems to be almost endless in itself."