Friday, 16 March 2007

Our love affair with lists

What is it about humans and our affinity for lists?

Most of us learn sequentially (concrete-sequentially if I use the Gregorc nomenclature to be exact) so here's why I believe we humans like lists (in the form of a list of course):

Growing up I listened to Casey Kasem's Top 40, prior to that was Dick Clark's countdown. My first recollection of a list was all the things I my parents had for me to do before I could go outside and play.

If I search in the dictionary for the word list, I'm confronted with another list of the possible definitions for list (kind of self referential don't you think?).

Here's some others lists:
Which reminds me I have to end this and finish some things on my "Honey Do" list my wife posted on the refrigerator...

Top 10 reason why humans like lists:
  1. Linear
  2. Eye Catching
  3. Digestible
  4. Succinct
  5. Organizational ('todo' list)
  6. Convincing (list of offenses in court)
  7. Comprehensive (this list isn't)
  8. Practical
  9. Transferable (work list)
  10. Trackable (shopping list)

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