What to actually put on a wishlist

Most advice about wishlists is about making one. Almost none of it is about what to put on it, which is the part people actually get stuck on.

Here's what makes a list useful to the people buying from it.

Range beats length

A list of thirty things isn't more helpful than a list of eight. It's less helpful, because nobody reads to the bottom.

What matters is the spread of prices. A good list has:

• A few small things, in the range someone buys without thinking about it
• Several mid-range items, which is where most gifts land
• One genuinely expensive thing you'd never buy yourself

That last one does more work than people expect. It's what several relatives club together for, and without it on the list they'll never think of it.

Order it honestly

Drag the thing you actually want to the top. Most people read the first three items and pick from those, so a list ordered by genuine preference gets you better outcomes than one ordered by when you added things.

Include the boring details

Sizes, colours, and which variant you mean. This sounds obvious and almost nobody does it. The alternative is either a guess or a conversation that ruins the surprise, and both are worse than a line of text in the item notes.

Add things when you think of them

The reason lists are hard to write in December is that you're trying to remember six months of stray thoughts in one sitting. A list you add to throughout the year is a better record than anything you can reconstruct on demand.

This is the real argument for a wishlist app over a note in your phone — it's somewhere to put the thought the moment you have it, and it's already shared when the time comes.

What not to add

Things you'd feel awkward receiving from the specific people who'll see the list. Visibility settings help, but the simpler rule is: if you'd wince at your aunt buying it, either hide it from her or leave it off.