📚Lists

When the Brain dump isn't enough

Why does this feature exist?

Originally, Ellie just had the Brain dump. Everything was supposed to go into the Brain dump.

However, many users started to outgrow the Brain dump and ask for more organization options. So we released "Lists" as a solution. You can think of them as "mini brain dumps".

Lists are meant to "hold and capture" tasks, like the Brain dump, before they need to be acted on.

The brain dump is a special list that cannot be edited or deleted. You can think of it as the default list

Common use cases

Common things we see are people making lists lists to separate out "Work" and "Personal" tasks. We've also seen lists for specific projects or life areas.

If you have a trip coming up, you can make a list called "🗽 NYC Trip" and put all tasks that need to get done for that trip in there. Then once its over, you can delete the list.

How does it work?

Creating a new list

You can access all of your lists by clicking the list name itself. You'll able to be able to create new lists from there as well by clicking "New List"

Single list mode

Editing and deleting lists

To edit a list, you can click the "3 dot menu" to the right of the list name.

Editing and deleting a list in Ellie

Show all lists at once

If you want to show all lists at once, you can do this by going to Settings -> Personalization -> Braindump & Lists.

"All lists" mode

Sidebar layout settings

To save space in this mode, we show a collapsed version of the cards. This allows you to view more cards at once. However, if you want to view the full cards in the sidebar, you can do so by selecting that option in the settings as well.

Full card mode

Best practices

1. If you can get away with using the Brain dump alone, default to this. Lists add additional complexity to your workflow and might not be suitable for everyone

2. Don't be afraid to delete lists when they are no longer useful (example: Creating lists for Projects, Trips, etc...)

FAQs

When should I use lists over labels?

Lists are meant to capture and hold tasks before they are scheduled to be done. I would use a label if you want to further categorize it after the task leaves the list.

It is completely fine if labels and lists overlap. (Example: Having a "Personal" list and "Personal" label).

The reason they are not combined into one is to provide more flexibility for users.

In the future, there will be an "auto-apply label to list" feature to help automate the process of automatically labeling a task if added to a list. You can vote for it here.