We have all fallen prey to clicking on a list article of some sort. This is a well-known way to get readers to click on your post. However, you may not know that you can use lists to improve productivity. The same reason they have an attraction for us is a way to use them as research tools.
Lists Are Everywhere
We can all think of click-bait sites (and Facebook) that lure us into clicking on an ad or article link with the promise of a list. Before we condemn lists as tools of Satan, it is worth looking closer at why lists appeal to us. They promise a summary of information. Not only that, they suggest that the items can be further examined to learn more about one if desired. Thus, we can scan for topics we find interesting and then go down the rabbit hole for those without wasting time on things we already know.
This is almost the definition of information research. We have a topic we want to learn at a deeper level, but there is potentially a minefield of content that we have to navigate that adds nothing to our understanding. The Internet and its vast volumes of material and information only make the haystacks more extensive that we are searching for needles of specific data.
A list is a form of a table of contents or similar outline. We can embrace them to speed our research and jump quickly to the items we care about most.
