I made such a list before I quit drinking. I ~decided that I was going to put a definitive end to my drinking career about a month before I did it, just did not execute it right away (not because of relapsing, I just did not do it for that time). I was also reading a lot of recovery stuff and about the 12-step program, and that part about moral inventories really caught my eyes as something potentially helpful for me, but I ended up not doing it in the AA way later during my recovery. Guilt and being fed up with unproductive repetitions in my behavior to the expense of constructive actions and changes was a major motivator that led up to my quitting, and it was incubating for a while... so I found it helpful to write down the things that I felt guilty and remorseful about, and keep looking at it/adding to it before I executed the actual "stop". I also included stuff that I thought I wanted to change in myself regardless of drinking, just personality and behavioral patterns. It was a very intense feeling for me and I was able to ride that feeling to help me. Then came to SR, asked for help, put down the drink, and updated that list several times during my ~first two sober months. I showed that list to my (then new) therapist a little later, and we discussed it during two sessions I think. I turned some parts of it into plans of action, basically a combination of what the 12-step program calls "amends" but more importantly for me, plans about what I wanted to do differently in the future. I found all this very powerful for me and I'm still working on some parts of it (nearly 14 months in) because some stuff is still not right. Going through this "plan" has also proven to be very helpful for me to seek the appropriate help at different phases of my recovery, based on features that I fail adjusting alone. So I also kinda agree with Scott as my approach has been a more present- and future-oriented one also, and I think it's good for me because it's in line with my personality (I'm not usually big on dwelling on the past and/or revisiting it much).
As for the drinking urges, I had them pretty intensely for about 5 months but gradually weaker and shorter. I did not recognize any particular "trigger time", which was not surprising to me given that at least during the last year of my career, I drank whenever... not exactly round the clock, but in a very erratic way. Being alone with my computer in my apartment was the biggest trigger though, so I tried to stay at home as little as possible. I could not divorce from the internet and I was using SR as my main recovery resource, but I changed the conditions of using it and it helped a bit.