Confession: I make lists.
Although I usually go to the store without a grocery list, I always have a to do list front and center at the office. So much to do, so little time, it is important to be able to prioritize.
Since adopting a BlackBerry, I find myself using the MemoPad function, which syncs to my Outlook Notepad. This is great if I am the only one who needs the list, but what if I wanted to share the list with my team? I could share my Outlook mailbox or some folder in it, but that is not always efficient if I have a large team, and team members would have to make a point of looking in my mailbox.
I could post a list to a wiki, but formatting might take as much time as function, and moving things to a 'done' section could prove time consuming.
I could look into help desk ticketing software, which would accomplish many of the same efficiencies as a shared to do list, but those are often costly to get good functionality. What if my team and I don't like this method of priority sharing after a test period? A financial investment in a software solution to easy shared lists might not be an easy sell in the current economy.
Low Risk Solution: a web app that will facilitate sharing lists! I did a little searching and found these:
All of these sites allow lists to be shared with other registered users.
All of the above except iPrioritize let me choose the login name as well as a password.
Ta-Da and iPrioritize allow for list subscriptions via RSS.
Wipee lets you update lists via Twitter.
Remember the Milk has the most features for prioritizing lists.
None of these sites have a cost.
They all offer a secured environment for your 'list' via login.
The choices for choosing a method to correspond with a goal have compounded with new technologies. If the productivity goal is to share to do lists among a team, why not give one of these solutions a try?
I've used some of these apps, and blogged on their usefulness, but I'm finding that the new Google Labs apps are replacing and integrating them much better.
Sharing lists is great with these tools. The challenge is to not get lost in administering them. Especially when it comes to short-term lists such as grocery shopping. One might just stick with paper for these.