Twos: Lists of Lists

Unbelievably, I have added another app to my set up: Twos. I use it for something so simple: lists. Lists of things.

Let’s start with what Twos is

It’s another app that could do everything you need- calendar, lists, notes, tasks. And it has some really cool features. My personal favourites are

1. Global shortcut

Bring Twos to the forefront of your screen with Command + .

Then use lots of keyboard shortcuts to do what you need. My most used is obviously creating a new list : command + option + L.

2. Type ‘time travel’ to go to a random earlier entry

This would be so fun over prolonged usage.

3. View of everything I added in a day

I really rate this type of set up, it shows me what I was thinking about and when.

This is a very tiny look at Twos, please read John Taylor’s write up of it for a more in depth look, it’s brilliant. Use his referral link to sign up too!

Yet I only use it for lists?…

I think it’s a similar situation to what I wrote about in Notion Lied to Us.

Just because you can do everything in one app doesn’t mean you should.

You might gain a greater functionality across the sum of your digital/productivity systems/second brain with more apps than you can with one app.

I am firmly in this camp, meaning adding apps to my system normally happens when a need is unmet. Put differently, whilst productivity tool tourism is a lifestyle I enjoy, I force myself to ask what need this new tool is supposedly going to solve.

So what need was unmet?

Very simply, a place to keep my lists.

I make lists all the time but they’re just for holding random things, things that make me happy, things that I want to do nothing with but casually review at some point in the future etc. They don’t normally need expansion or further connection. But every other tool in my system is geared towards action or reflection. These aren’t tasks and they’re not journal entries. There just things. This is, conveniently, how Twos markets itself. A place for things.

To get these things written down and resurfaced when needed, I need quick capture and a good search. Offline access is also ideal here. This is not something I worry about most of the time, but the randomness I collect in these lists are the sorts of things my mind wanders to when I’m stuck on a train platform with no signal a few times a week, so offline support is helpful.

They were sat in Apple notes for a long time, which does meet those criteria, but it interfered with my capture process so I wanted them elsewhere.

Things are how Twos markets itself, and it’s on all devices, with a great search and it can work offline. Perfect.

More tools?!

I now use a LOT of tools everyday. Honestly, giving each app a specific job is really helping me in what is possibly the busiest phase of my life thus far. Compartmentalisation is currently working well.

My one goal with my systems is to put information where I need it, which seems so obvious it’s hardly worth mentioning. But previously I put information in a second-class place because I felt like adding too many apps to my system was not a good idea. I’ve done a 180 on that thinking.

Summary

So Twos is great, you could leverage it for so many functions but right now, I just need it to hold the lists of randomness that my brain comes up with. It’s not about using every app to 100 or even 90% of its abilities. It’s about finding unmet needs in your systems and leveraging the tools on the market to create a digital system that puts things where you need them.

Twos is the winner for my need to make lists of utterly random things. It makes interacting with all of these things super fun and useful and that’s a win in my book!

Do you have lists of lists?! Where do you store them? Is it normal to think about where to put lists in such depth?…