Staying on Top of It with ListPro

I am a big fan of lists. Having a good set of checklists and reference lists can save you lots of time and can help reduce errors. That is one of the reasons I like ListPro.

In this post we cover a few of its many features, including new features in its recently released version 5. By the way, before I forget it: ListPro is available for Pocket PC, WinMo Smartphones, and Palm devices and these packages come with ListPro desktop software for Windows.

Lists can be very useful for managing your time. Some examples are as follows:

• I use the list to the right to guide me through my Weekly Review and Planning Session.
• Lists can be used for task management and even for project management.
• You can use lists for time-tracking.
• Lists are also great for storing reference information, so you can quickly look up info when needed.

ListPro ships with a few templates that address some of these examples. For instance, it comes with a great Getting Things Done checklist and it comes with a Time Tracker checklist. I show snapshots of both of these below.

Note that the view on the right side of the above snapshot is the detailed view of “A Project.” The time-track example is shown in the following snapshot:

Note that a summary of the total time for an activity (such as a consulting job) is shown at the bottom of the view.

As noted earlier, ListPro is also great for reference lists. You can construct your own lists, and/or choose from a ton of lists available at their site. One example of the latter is the “survival checklist” shown below:

One of the things I use reference lists for is to build my own dictionaries of new terms I encounter when studying a complex field, such as theology or philosophy. This has been handy for me, because my memory is just not what it was when I was 20 years old.

There are several new features in the latest release of ListPro. I shan’t get into all of them, but would like to mention a couple. First, within the Notes field of a list, you can now use font formatting. With this new feature, you can choose font size and type, you can bold or italicize text, and you can use bullets and numbers. Speaking of the Notes pane, you can add pictures to it and live hyperlinks. Together with the formatting options, that gives you a lot of flexibility.

Another rather neat new feature is the ability to customize the format of checkboxes. You can use the standard ones with a blank square for not completed, and a square with a checkmark in it for completed, or you can choose from a variety of other button options:

No doubt I am overlooking some features, but this should give you some idea of how you can use ListPro to stay on top of things.

Oh, one final thing. Just to assure you that I had no conflict of interest in writing this, I have finished my portion of the 2007 Awards judging for Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine over the weekend, and I did not judge ListPro or any similar products.