Your Brain Has a Cheat Code... It’s Called a List - FutureIQ

6,714 views Wait, is this logic right? • Mar 21, 2025

Slog Reference: Power of Lists

Description

Want to be more productive and less stressed? This video shows you how simple checklists can help you get things done faster, reduce mistakes, and focus better. Learn how habits like creating to-do lists, using the Eisenhower Matrix, and following systems like Getting Things Done (GTD) can make your life easier. Whether you’re trying to reduce stress, stay organized, or get more work done in less time, checklists are a game-changer! Watch now to see how you can use this simple trick to organize your day and be more efficient.

More Videos For You:
Goals vs Systems: https://youtu.be/S0fs3SBmgKE
System 1: https://youtu.be/DIVTMooO7o4

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

Sources:
Shopify's Director of Engineering on using Parkinson's https://theengineeringmanager.substack.com/p/parkinsons-law-its-real-so-use-it
Psychological Time https://neurolaunch.com/psychological-time/
Timeboxing from Asana: https://asana.com/resources/what-is-timeboxing
Having a child is the ultimate Pomodoro https://x.com/fortelabs/status/1542379934538145799
YAGNI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it
Book: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B0037NX018
Inverse-U curve of time pressure and creativity https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-08435-018
SpaceX Book Review https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-reentry-by-eric-berger
Buffer 4-day work week: https://buffer.com/resources/four-day-workweek-at-buffer/
25 companies with a 4-day work week: https://www.thetechedvocate.org/25-companies-with-4-day-work-weeks-built-in/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3jmSrYCWYI

00:00 Intro
00:45 How can checklists save lives?
04:50 But.. going through a checklist takes up so much time!
07:38 GTD - Why lists matter?
09:33 43 Folders System
12:01 Eisenhower Matrix
12:50 Getting Things Done - Finally!
14:14 What is Task Inertia?
17:05 43 Folder System X GTD
20:52 Which is better - Separate or Combined Lists?
21:46 Lists = Less Stress

#futureiq #checklist

Related Slog Matches

Power of Lists

Date Proximity

41.00

Transcript

- simple lists can change your life they can reduce stress reduce errors increase your productivity and make your life calmer so in today's episode I want to talk about two list based approaches one is checklists and another is GTD okay checklists have been shown to actually save lives in surgeries and hospitals and airplanes but even though you are not a pilot you can use them in your life okay plus GTD is a technique for using lists to increase your productivity while at the same time reducing errors and reducing your stress all right I think I definitely need both these methods in my life go on sure so let's start with checklists right yeah how can checklists save lives okay so Atul

0m 51s gawande a surgeon and professor at Harvard has written a book called The checklist Manifesto in that he points for example that in a big hospital a 19point checklist was implemented related to surgeries okay okay which is that the team doing the surgery had to just go through that and make sure that each item is checked off right okay and this included simple things like confirm patient's name confirm which procedure is to be done confirm the location is it left leg or right leg okay yeah you don't want to amputate the wrong leg EG during the surgery and all of this has to be set out loudly by one person and the other people have to agree that this is there

1m 37s right similarly make sure all members of the operating team are aware of the allergies of the patient figure out how much blood is needed for the surgery and is that much available right here right none of this is very complicated all of these are simple things correct but earlier what used to happen is that every once in a while one of these used to get forgotten or missed and then horrible things happen right yeah use of this in one large Hospital 19 item checklist resulted in 40% reduction in deaths right wow actual randomized controlled study wow 50% reduction in infections at the location of the surgery okay so it seems trivial it seems like what are you talking about

2m 28s right and yet it has such huge impacts and we're not talking about dumb people being involed these are surgeons at top hospitals right another example right have you heard of the term hospital infection I have actually I've I've known someone who's gone through it and it was a terrible time yeah what happens is that especially for somebody elderly some minor trouble they have so they have to be admitted to the hospital and then they catch some infection in the hospital yeah and that infection is resistant to all drugs and the person ends up dying yeah right I know multiple people for whom this has happened okay okay in Michigan a cleanliness checklist in the icus virtually eliminated a

3m 14s particular type of deadly hospital infection wow okay pre-flight checklists that Pilots have to go through right have significantly reduced accidents in Airlines over the last 50 60 years and as a result airline travel is now one of the safest modes of travel in the world in fact uh the uh the absolute extent of pre-flight checklists can be seen when uh one of the countries is launching a rocket into space they actually take hours and hours to go through multiple items on the checklist and they call them out loud because just the act of calling them out loud makes it very here and in the moment and forces uh the person responsible for that item on the

3m 58s checklist to actually acknowledge and take responsibility for that item on the checklist so yeah so one of the things that calling it out loud does is that normally if you are doing the same thing over and over again it becomes automatic your system one brain starts doing those things and then you are no longer paying attention which can be dangerous yeah saying it out loud forces it to come to system two so that if there is any issue it gets handled right yep uh one of the reasons Japanese trains are so reliable is because the train drivers are taught to do everything loudly as in you know they will point at a signal saying yes I

4m 40s see that it is green yes I have done uh changed the speed to so and so Etc yeah it looks comical but it works it definitely works here is the problem that most people will bring up which is that going through a checklist takes time and most people might not have that time oh like you're saying your house is on fire and you don't have time to go through a checklist right yeah and I don't think the firefighters have time to go through the checklist either here is my hose here is the hydrant here I attaching it firefighters are given a checklist and they are taught to assess the situation calmly and deliberately and go through the checklist right a lot

5m 20s of emergency operators are told to not do things hurriedly and take time right special ops operators have a saying slow is smoooth and smooth is fast okay rushing increases the chance of mistakes so yes checklists even though they take time they will actually save you time in the long run because not having the checklist results in mistakes which results in more time being taken slow is smooth smooth is fast that's actually very very sensible advice slow is smooth smooth is fast but here is the problem with it I am not a surgeon I not not a pilot I'm not a firefighter I'm not a emergency responder none of this applies to me yes it does apply to you right it

6m 08s applies in simple things in day-to-day lives for example having a travel packing checklist okay just before you are leaving home for a one week vacation or a 3-day business trip or whatever have a checklist where you go through and make sure you haven't forgotten everything every once in a while you run into situation where people are like oh I forgot my charger I forgot my travel pack and so on yeah another thing is that in the workplace this can be implemented for things that you do regularly either by the employees themselves or by the manager right how I mean the famous one is like the toilet checklists that ensures that toilets get cleaned properly but you know you might

6m 51s get the impression that this only for dumb employees who don't follow rules but Atul G's book proves that even for the smartest people checklists help right so look into your daily life and see where you can Implement checklists right yeah I I make checklists in fact I make a lot of checklists in my uh everyday life I make to-do lists not checklist specifically but to-do lists where I put things that I need to do or things that are part of my job work project whatever Etc except the thing is the things on those to-do list remain unchecked for a long long time and then I dump that to-do list yeah so the problem the problem there is that

7m 33s you need better to-do lists and that brings us to the second part of the episode GTD that I was talking about right okay yeah but before I talk about GTD let's first look at the advantages of a list system or a to-do list system right all right one problem that a lot of us have is that when you know that something needs to be done it is sitting in your brain somewhere at the back even when you're doing something else you're still thinking about oh that needs to be done and I shouldn't forget it and it's like causing lowkey stress to you throughout right and having a bunch of those adds up okay and then either you

8m 12s are like a little stressed all the time or you forget things right yes and this also affects your ability to focus on the current task right yes what a list allows you to do is offload your brain right let's say you have a to-do list system system which every time you complete a task you check okay what do I do next or every day you check what am I supposed to do today right so you know that once it is there in the to-do list you are not going to forget it right once you train yourself to do that then as soon as you put something in your tro list your brain stops worrying about it

8m 49s right correct so even your system one which usually gets stressed about such things I shouldn't forget that relaxes correct because there is there is a very clear place where it has been noted down yes and uh the first item on a to-do list is always check the to-do list correct so pretty much it is like you know you're closing a whole bunch of browser tabs because you know you will open them when needed correct correct um relaxes your brain okay true but one of the problems with just a simple to-do list is like you pointed out some things just stay there for a long time and then you write it off and then there is to-do

9m 24s list bankruptcy and so on right yeah I like the phrasee to-do list bankr yeah so you need a system for that right before I get to GTD let me explain a simpler system called the 43 folders system okay uh this started in the last century when things were done on paper with actual folders right and the idea was you have 31 folders one for each day of the month okay and 12 other folders which is one for each month of the year okay now anytime you get a new item that needs to be done you think about are you going to do it this month or later okay if you're going to do it in this month think of what

10m 06s date you want to do it roughly right and you decide oh I'll do it on the 25th so put that item in folder number 25 wait so these are 31 folders and 12 folders not 31 folders for each of the 12 folders yeah yeah yeah yeah okay so I'll come to that right basically if it is something you're going to do next month huh there is just a single folder for the whole next month no dates you just dump everything for that month in there okay if you say I need to do this three months from now there'll be just one single folder for April okay right and you just dump everything in April right

10m 40s okay for the current month you have it broken up by days okay right and so now what has to happen is that every day in the morning you take the folder for that date open it and just go through the items right because you have spread out things every day is going to have only a small number of things right and if any day has too many things you look at them prioritize and then just move it to the appropriate folder okay so every month every beginning of the month you take whatever is in that month C folder and then split it according to whatever days you want to allocate correct so this just repeats every on a monthly basis

11m 16s correct right so in modern times there is a simplification of this where you can do it week- wise instead of month-wise right okay so have seven folders for the seven days of the current week correct then three folders for the three remaining weeks in this month okay and then 11 folders for the 11 remaining months in this year right so it's a 21 folder system so whenever a new task come you decide are you doing it this week then which day of the week are you're doing it in the next this month put it in the appropriate week or you put it in one of the future months right interesting so this is actually a

11m 54s great way to sort your tasks according to urgency and importance and actually that reminds me of the Eisenhower Matrix yes which is basically a um four quadrant system of urgent important not urgent not important we put it up on the screen for you but the idea is whatever is urgent and important needs to be done right away like it's on fire kind of right away whatever is urgent but not important can be scheduled in terms of a project whatever is important but not urg ENT can be uh sort of planned for and whatever is not urgent and not important don't focus on it throw it away keep it away right so GTD is a refinement of this kind of thinking

12m 41s right so you have multiple to-do list not just to-do lists but different kinds of lists for important versus urgent versus this versus that right correct correct so to explain it let me just go with the GTD flow chart right okay every time a new item shows up for you to think about or worry about or do right you ask the first question right is this actionable okay is this something I can do something about or I should do something about right there are lots of things where you can worry about things but there's nothing you can do about them so best to stop worrying about them yeah like the climate change problem for the entire Earth is not actionable right

13m 22s or there are three things you can do with non-actionable items right either you decide this is not worth thinking of about and just trash it or you put it in a list called reference saying that someday I will need to go back and look at this correct or you put it in a list called someday slm maybe right which is that every once in a while you look at your maybe list and decide should I Elevate this two things I'm working on right now or leave it at maybe okay okay okay next okay it is an actionable item then ask yourself does it take a single step to complete or it's a multi-step thing okay okay if it's a multi-step

14m 01s thing then it's a project okay so put it in a list of projects okay we'll come back to that list later okay so now what you're left with is okay it's a single step item H then you ask yourself can I do it in two minutes if you can do it in two minutes do it right away okay some people have trouble with that and hopefully you have come up with uh techniques to work on that okay it's called task inertia Na and again people Afflicted with ADHD know what I'm talking about task inertia is essentially you know you have to start the task you know that you can do the task in two minutes but you just can't

14m 41s get yourself to start the task and it's it basically has to do with the way uh dopamine is handled by the brain and it is different for people who have ADHD and people who don't have ADHD for people who have ADHD starting the task and completing it is actually a a very simple process for people who have ADHD uh starting the task requires a surge of dopamine or something I'm not really sure about the science of it I'm still learning about it but it's it's difficult task inertia you can't start a task just like that even if it is 2 minutes yeah for most other people yeah there is still some inertia in doing it

15m 21s but push yourself and you will be glad right it feels so good right right away do it if it takes less than two minutes do it right away then move to the next item in your list right right okay okay suppose it is going to take longer than 2 minutes right then you ask yourself is this something I have to do or can I delegate it to someone else right interesting if you can get someone else to do it right away send it to them with a message saying do this Etc right and if you watched other episodes you know it's a good idea to give them a deadline also yeah and decide whether you need to

15m 59s follow up if you need to follow up schedule the follow up saying oh I need to follow up on Friday or I need to follow up next Tuesday or whatever right but as soon as the followup is scheduled you are done with this item okay now you are left with items that take a long time and you have to do them yourself right correct then you ask yourself you know can this be done at any time any place or Are there specific conditions specific context in which it needs to be done right it's like okay does it have to be done at a specific time then put it in your calendar does it have to be

16m 33s done at home then put it in your home list right does it need a specific device laptop is needed then put it in your laptop list right is it something that needs to be done at the supermarket then put it in your Supermarket list right so basically have lists for each context and then in that context when you are at the supermarket you pull out the supermarket a list right okay this is very interesting but this basically means I have to jum multiple lists of different areas of my life and there is still that project list that oh let's come to the project list right once you have gone through all of this notice at

17m 08s this point your inbox is empty you have zero outstanding items you have a bunch of lists that you have to go through but your inbox is empty your brain is empty you're not thinking about anything you have delegated your arrangement of tasks to the list GTD list right this is one of the most important things about GTD list or the 43 folders uh and so on even checklist right stop your brain from worrying about things but also ensure that nothing gets forgotten right anyway coming to the project list okay now look at a project okay there it's going to need multiple steps correct do a little bit of planning to figure out what is the first step in that project okay

17m 54s sometimes the first step might be planet and other times you know what the first step is right get a team or schedule a meeting with shant or whatever right yeah figure out the first step and then go through the same flowchart for the first step put it in now you can forget about this project because the first step of the project has been gted GTD exactly right and you do all of this and now things are in their lists and depending on your context if you're at work at your laptop pull out the work list pull out the laptop List look at which one is the most important start work on it and repeat right this is GTD there's of

18m 37s course an entire book on this you should read that but this is the idea very interesting and uh I do have some variant of this essentially what I end up doing is I end up making a to-do list and putting various items on the to-do list in the Eisenhower Matrix in terms of wherever it is needed I haven't really gone into the additional planning step that he just described with GTD maybe I'll have to try that out and see but with me a lot of to-do bankruptcies happen so maybe this time it will stick I guess people who have never made lists checklist to-do list in their life they will need to sit down one entire day and

19m 17s create this kind of a uh to-do list of lists for themselves and then move accordingly in life right see there are two ways to do this right particular ularly organized people would want to implement the whole system right and for that you get GTD apps right and there is whole bunch of variations one of them works for you maybe you want to read the book right correct but for me what I would say is that you don't don't necessarily implement the whole shebang right think through the basic idea right I think the most important thing here is that whenever your inbox should be empty because everything gets put on a list right either it gets done right away

20m 01s because it's 2 minutes or it goes onto the correct list and you know that it will get picked up when that list is uh picked up right and that's it you are significantly less stressed but you don't forget anything right so stick with something that is sustainable for you right the more complicated the system for some people it is great but for some people that's just too much process right they don't want too much process so have like a very minimal process that's why I gave some variations the 43 folders and all that which are simpler than all of uh GTD yeah for some people 43 folders is all they are going to need and for some

20m 40s people a more extensive GTD kind of list of lists is going to be needed where you have a list for different aspects of your life work Supermarket gym personal this that whatnot but here's the question is it advisable to create separate lists for personal life and work life or comine them David Allen the guy who invented GTD and has written the GTD book says no you should have just one GTD for everything in your life right GTD exists to get stuff done and that stuff can be any of your stuff right Point uh Thiago Forte has a method called para which allows you to like you know have projects and areas and things like that take a look at that if you

21m 24s want to get a idea of how to manage these things but usually just Club everything together have one system is uh what they say of course GTD has context right so there is a personal context will be different from the work context yeah very interesting checklists to-do lists and a better version of to-do lists the GTD yeah so I think the main thing for me is use lists to offload your brain right our brain is from the African saana at that time our too list had four items on it right the top one being survive no the four FS food got it got it so our brains are not built for the modern world which is why

22m 11s it causes so much stress and we forget things yeah so use lists so that our brain can do what it does best right lots of things have already Incorporated some of these techniques right so the agile backlog that software people might know or Canan boards right these are pretty much lists of things to be done and picked up right um up till now many of you are using these things because your manager tells you to but consider using the same technique for other things that you are doing right for personal development for your personal life and so on right also maybe read the two books that I have mentioned checklist Manifesto by Atul gande and getting things done by David

23m 00s Allen right yeah but like I said not necessary to read those books not necessary to do the whole detailed thing like people go crazy with the amount of detail in these things right some people just love process don't have to do that start with something simple which is like one step ahead of what you're already doing but do it sustainably yeah the sustainable part is important and also uh creating a second brain doesn't mean it has has to have the same complexity as your first brain yeah uh this is specifically for all of those who uh enjoy making those processes and those second brain systems but don't actually follow up on the system and you know work with the

23m 44s instructions of the system I am kind of telling myself here for whenever I watch this episode later so work on a system that actually gets you to work on the items in that system all right yes in the productivity World there is a lot of people who just want to come up with the perfect system and they want to optimize their whole system and they not ticking and this and that and they don't do any actual work right don't do that the work is the important thing the system is secondary just have some system and you can refine it over time but only after you have done some work yeah and if you are already thinking of oh I'll set up

24m 26s this system and that system but don't exactly know what to set up the systems for don't worry we've lined up the episode next for you which is about goals versus systems and uh if you have a goal in mind and you're struggling to figure out how to reach that goal the answer is systems and that's the next episode coming up shrikant naen future IQ