10 Reasons Why We Love Making Lists Lists are everywhere: on Facebook, on TV. Making lists may not bring order to the chaos that is the contemporary world. But it's a start.
NPR logo 10 Reasons Why We Love Making Lists

10 Reasons Why We Love Making Lists

One of countless 25 Random Things About Me lists on Facebook. Facebook.com hide caption

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What's On Your List?

What lists would you like to see? The 6 Most Colorful Characters in Congress? My 5 Favorite Yellow Things? Three Movies That Deserve a Sequel (But Don't Have One Yet)? Tell us in the comments section below.

Why is it that everywhere you turn there's a list for this or that?

On Facebook, friends recently began posting 25 Random Things About Me — which bloggers have been doing for years. Now some people are lambasting the listiness while others are shortening it to a more manageable 3 Random Things (3 Places I Have Lived or 3 TV Shows I Watch).

Other Facebook and MySpace lists abound: 6 Great Books. 8 Favorite Songs. 7 Reasons to Hate ... Whatev.

David Letterman's Top 10 List has become a bona fide art form. And there's a list of Top 5 Musicians on Twitter floating around.

Everyday parlance is littered with lists: laundry, grocery, honey-do. When Dick Cheney was asked by then-presidential candidate George W. Bush to find him a suitable running mate, Cheney did what all pols would do: He drew up a short list. (And then he wound up as the VP pick.)

"Enough organization, enough lists and we think we can control the uncontrollable," observed a character on the TV show House. By now you would think there are enough lists. But still we keep jotting things down in an orderly fashion.

Why do we love lists? Let us count the ways:









