Organized people keep lists: to-do lists, shopping lists, lists of books they want to read, movies they want to watch, restaurants they want to try. Sometimes, the lists become a way of taking care of the people in our lives, like gift ideas or reminders for a spouse or co-worker. I keep lots of lists, and depending on what I’m working on at the time, I might have a dozen or so sitting around to keep track of things.

On the whole, lists are a good thing. I certainly feel better when I write things down. But a certain kind of list, that long-running, chock-full wish list of stuff you want to try or buy, can do more psychic harm than good. They’re a great way to keep track of all the cool stuff you hear about, but there’s the rub. How often do you actually pick something off your wish list? And how often do you look at your wish list and feel bad because you’ll probably never get to any of it?

How-To: Truly reset your .Mac sync data [Ars Technica]

I never have trouble finding company when it comes to whining about the reliability of .Mac syncing. It's surely not fair to lay all of this at the feet of the .Mac developers -- sync is, we are often reminded, "hard." But if you want to rely on syncing your Calendars, Contacts, Preferences, snippets, Yojimbo, and what have you via .Mac in a battlefield environment, you're going to need a strong stomach, a lot of patience, and reliable backups. Plus, friends, you will regularly have to _reset frickin' everything_.

Entirely overfamiliar with that particular reality, I was pleased to get pointed toward David Chartier's tutorial on saving your .Mac's village by burning it to the ground. It's a handy, illustrated companion piece to Apple's own advice on scorching earth. Very handy, and, yeah, you will eventually need it. So print it out. Maybe even have it laminated.

Apple's .Mac syncing features are sometimes no exception to these problems, and even though Apple provides a number of decent solutions in its .Mac sync support pages, they don't always work. Fortunately, a brief adventure using .Mac sync chat support (found at the bottom of that aforelinked page) cleared up a repeating "merge/overwrite" sync dialog problem for me, and we felt the procedure was worth sharing.

FWIW, here's a few other things I do (as a raving .Mac paranoiac):

TWiT 133: Jonathan Coulton - Functional And Elegant

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jonathan Coulton, Merlin Mann, Veronica Belmont, Ryan Block, and Tom Merritt

Jonathan Coulton and niche broadcasting, HD DVD finally kaput, YouTube goes down, frozen RAM and more.

Here's a free, direct MP3 download of TWiT 133.

Man, I really loved this episode. Jonathan Coulton's music and performances are inspiring in themselves, but as a fellow (albeit, much more modestly successful) "microbrand," I have huge respect for how he runs the business of his career. (more after the jump, including why we were all on this episode together in the first place)

Ask Chicagoist: Help Me Wake Up!

The always useful Ask Chicagoist addresses a recent obsession of mine, making yourself get out of bed in the morning. I used to be a morning person. When I faced a 30-mile reverse commute to get work by 8:00 a.m., I had to. And for a few months last year, I was possessed by a spirit that made me get out of bed at 5 every day so I could squeeze in some work before the toys started flying.

NPR: Tech Junkies Crazy About 'Getting Things Done'

As an insufferably huge public broadcasting nerd, I was happy to hear (via our pal, Ryan) that 43 Folders was mentioned in tonight's All Things Considered story about Getting Things Done.

Since this may be the first time some folks have visited the site, I wanted to highlight a few of my favorite GTD posts from the past four years. We talk about lots more than GTD here, but it's definitely a lot of my readers' favorite topic.

Thanks for stopping by. Ton of links after the jump...

Oprah's Clutter Man: "It's Never About the Stuff"

Clean Sweep's Peter Walsh (previously) has a new book out, and Mediabistro had the chance to chat with him while he was out promoting it.

While I wish Peter had held out for a more cromulent title ("Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?" Ouch.), I so admire this guy's grip on what clutter does to your mind. Or at least what it does to mine.

Typically swell quote:

Our show was never about the stuff. I told the producers early on that you can only organize so many closets and garages before people lose their minds... We all have stuff. What we had to do was tell people's stories through their stuff, and see them realizing what their relationship to the stuff had become.

and, later:

Macworld '08: Merlin Mann / "Living with Data"

It has now been two months since I sold my laptop and started working with just a Mac Mini in my office and an iPhone, and I've more or less survived. I never expected it to be permanent, but unless my life changes drastically and I have to start traveling full-time, I could probably go on like this indefinitely. My real work hasn't suffered, because I was doing all of that on the desktop anyway, and with Google Reader's killer mobile version, I've been able to satisfy any web surfing urges away from the computer.

Tired of trying to fit exercise into your busy work schedule? Sure you are. Lucky for you there's the TreadDesk, which lets you walk while you work! Not convinced? Then you're just too lazy to click through. Here, tubby:

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Pushing Paper Out the Door - New York Times

Is it just me, or is the Times tossing softballs for organizational nerds on purpose? Today's story on the ways people are purging paper from their lives gives lots of ink (digital, of course) to our friend, the Fujitsu ScanSnap, and comes with the kind of grand statements that no trend piece should be without:

[M]any families may be closer to entering a paperless world than they realize. Paper-reducing technologies have crept into homes and offices, perhaps more for efficiency than for environmentalism; few people will dispute the convenience of online bill-paying and airline e-tickets.

Sniff browser history for improved user experience

Talk about sufficiently advanced technology. Although you will surely see this post linked many times this week, I have to throw in my own kudos. Fantastic trick, Niall!

In a nutshell, Niall shows how you can use a combination of CSS and JavaScript to selectively display information based on previously visited URLs in your visitor's browser history. Have you been to Digg? Then Niall's site displays a "Digg This" badge (and, importantly for Niall's purposes, not 100 other badges for sites you haven't used).

Try Niall's live example to see this stunner in action.

Dang. That sound you just heard? That's a few million people scurrying to hit "Clear History." Terrific work, Niall -- totally clever.

Now, regrettably, I suspect the race begins for seeing how horribly something like this can be abused.

[via Brian and Ev]

• Kevin Kelly -- The Technium - "When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied." That pretty much sums it up. I suspect this might be the most succinct, profound, and prescient sentence I'll read this year. A must-read post.
• Dogcow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - "The original dogcow was named Clarus by Apple employees. The sound she makes is 'Moof!'"
• Rands In Repose: Out Loud - "Developing a compelling presentation involves a series of decisions and exercises to align your head with the fact that you’re delivering your content directly to people. No internet. No weblog. Just you." [via Daring Fireball]
• Quiet your Home with Ambient Noise - O'Reilly Digital Media Blog - Living in intimate proximity to a tribe of suburban Wookiees has made our family very familiar with white noise generators. They're a godsend. (Most especially if you have an infant) [thanks, Gordon!]
• How to record a kickass podcast between two macs — and cheap! - I like the idea of using the Skype connection only as a "monitor." I'd add that it doesn't hurt to do a "clap" at the beginning so you have something common to sync around.
• Your Prep Card: Don’t Leave Home Without It - "Take a 3″ x 5″ index card and write down 3 key points you want to mention in simple clear language, nouns and verbs. At the bottom, give yourself 2 reminders to avoid your bad habits." Good idea. Once you're out of a comfortable environment and feeling stressed, your head starts to swim. (And by "you" I mean "me")
• The Smart Set: Night Terrors - "Chronic sleep loss of even two to three hours per night held the potential to hamper body and mind functioning, not to mention quality of life."
• Being Funny - Steve Martin: "About to pass me by, Elvis stopped, looked at me and said in his beautiful Mississippi drawl: 'Son, you have an ob-leek sense of humor.'" [via MeFi]

It snowed almost a foot here in Chicago last night, and looking at all that white stuff made me think about junior high, when my school was out an entire week for snow. I built most of the eastern seaboard in SimCity 2000 that week, on a 33 MHz PC no less. I was a nerd. It was awesome.

I thought about how fun that sounded today after I finished shoveling, and considered digging around for an updated copy of SimCity online. Then I reminded myself that the last thing I need is another hobby involving the computer. I use a computer for work. When I'm finished working, I screw around on the internet. When I'm tired of that, I read books, which isn't a whole lot different, if a little easier on the eyes and attention span.

Pardon me while I get out the nostalgia hankie, but I miss the days when my hobbies had nothing to do with staring at a glowing screen. When I was a kid, I could sit down in my room over an unopened wax box of Topps baseball cards and completely tune out the outside world until four hours later, when my mom called me to dinner, handed me a napkin, and told me to wipe the drool from chewing 36 sticks of gum off my chin.