Morpho Designs

List Grinder Makes Hamburger of Web Resources

Photo by Secretly Ironic

Don’t Have a Cow!

If you feel compelled to check out a blogger’s top ten list or technical tweaks for your favorite software, but don’t have time for them all, the List Grinder is for you. You may also want to give it a try if your RSS feed reader is unmanageable, your downloaded PDFs are going unread or your software gadgets are growing faster than your ability to remember the reason you downloaded them.

Daily Grind

There are lots of different ideas to help you organize your lists.
Some good ones include tossing items out and prioritizing what’s left.
As simple as that seems, if you still harbor the notion that you can do it all, not much will be tossed out and you’ll paralyze yourself with priorities.
Here is another idea: don’t spend too much time treating tossing and prioritizing as separate and exclusive tasks. Instead, prioritize and toss randomly!

This isn’t about grocery lists or tasks dictated by your boss. Don’t blame me if you forget the milk or get fired for borking the Smith account. List Grinder is more appropriate for those never-ending collections of web resources that you stumble upon while surfing.

List Grading

You just found a great resource on the web. Let’s say it is a list of eight ways to speed up Firefox browser.
The very first thing you should do is browse the list and decide if it is worthwhile to pursue.
Obviously, if you think it is too technical, too time-consuming or too much work for too little return, your job is done. Pat yourself on the back and go find another list to grind.

If the list intrigues you, immediately grab some scrap paper and write down these four keywords:

Desire

How excited did you become when you discovered this list?

Effort

How hard will it be to devote time to work on this list?

Satisfaction

How important will it be to gain something of value from this list?

Knowledge

How important will it be to learn the things that this list offers?

(Yes, use DESK to remember these words!)

Write the numbers 1 (most important) through 4 (least important) beside each keyword to rank them as they apply to the list.

Each of the keywords has its own weight in your mind; however, any list may override that natural order. The example list may be so important to you that, if you normally spend little time processing lists, you might make an exception in this case because of the payoff. This would lead you to place a 1 or 2 beside Effort. When you have finished, your scrap of paper should look something like this:

Desire 2

Effort 1

Satisfaction 3

Knowledge 4

List Grinding

Here is the radical part. Take each number and multiply it by 10. Now, we’re going to refer to the list in terms of percentages, such as 20% or 40%. The “grading” keywords will now be replaced with their “grinding” counterparts, which also can be remembered as DESK:

Discard

Mentally eliminate this percentage of the list.

Evaluate

Skim through this percentage of the list to determine whether to continue.

Study

Process this percentage of the list fully.

Keep

Bookmark or otherwise save this percentage of the list.

Use whatever rationale you want to pick apart the list. In our example, you might want to skip any tip that requires additional settings to be made or, more practically, tips that you don’t think you’ll need.
Regardless of your results, you’ll never have to complete a list again!

Here is our completed sample scrap of paper.

Desire 20% (Discard)

Effort 10% (Evaluate)

Satisfaction 30% (Study)

Knowledge 40% (Keep)

Have it Your Way

As you grind lists, you may find that you always assign the most importance to the same pair of keywords.

Decide for yourself what that says about the real importance of these non-trivial, yet non-urgent lists that you voluntarily bring into your life.

Is it better to emphasize Knowledge and Satisfaction over Effort and Desire? Leave a comment!

Summary of Ingredients

Desire is the exact opposite of disdain, which makes it easy to understand why it is paired with Discard. Placing the highest importance on this keyword will ensure that at least 50% of the list will be considered for evaluation and possibly, further study.

Effort represents an investment in time. By Evaluating a small (10%) subset of a list, you leverage time-savings, because you’ve already decided that it is worth studying the list, anyway! It may seem paradoxical to claim that, by Evaluating a large (40%) subset, you achieve the same savings but, that is exactly what happens. If you skim the first paragraph of four recommended sites, you’re not putting much effort into processing that list, thus saving time! If you decide to pursue the list after skimming forty percent of it, either you’ve changed your mind about the value of the list or you’ve misjudged your willingness to waste time.

Satisfaction and expectations go hand in hand. By placing the highest importance on satisfaction, you effectively wind up discarding more of the list. This a good thing because, if the list turns out to be a dud, you won’t have wasted too much time Studying. On the other hand, if the list is fantastic, every item on it will please you.
Obviously, this does nothing for a mediocre list, as you may just discard the best parts!

Knowledge is internalized information. Placing the highest importance here minimizes the requirement to Keep a reference to facts, which are externalized. Of course, you may still want to link to the resource