Why I Keep Two Lists (And Why the Research Backs Me Up)

I have a phone app for a 'Things to do' list, open on every device I own. My phone, my laptop, my tablet. It has two lists.". It sits on my desk when I'm working, moves to the kitchen when I'm cooking and follows me upstairs when I'm done for the day. It has two sections. One is my to-do list. The other is what I think of as my daily routine list: every recurring task I need to do every day. Morning meds, water the plants, yoga stretches, that kind of thing.

I came up with this system by accident and kept it because it worked. The routine list handles the stuff that happens every day. The to-do list handles everything else. Between the two of them, I rarely have to hold much in my head at once.

Which, it turns out, is exactly the point.

The Problem With Keeping Things in Your Head

The ADHD brain has a severe working memory problem. This is not a dramatic overstatement. It is one of the best-supported findings in adult ADHD research. You can improve this somewhat with regular mindful meditation but until you get to that stage you need to externalise the list.

Working memory is the mental scratchpad your brain uses to hold information while you do something with it. It's what lets you remember to reply to a text while you're halfway through making dinner. Most people can hold around five to seven pieces of information at a time. Adults with ADHD hold less.

A 2013 study that examined the data from 38 separate working memory experiments in adults with ADHD found consistent impairments across both verbal and spatial memory. The researchers concluded that these deficits don't fade after childhood. They persist into adulthood and are likely a core feature of the condition.

So every task you try to hold in your head competes for the same limited space. And the more you try to hold, the more you lose. Keeping a mental to-do list is not just inconvenient for us. It's running a process our brains are specifically under-resourced for.

What Happens When You Write It Down

Writing things down doesn't just help you remember them. It does something more specific than that.

A 2011 study from Florida State University looked at what the brain does with unfinished tasks. What they found: the brain keeps open goals active in the background, quietly using mental resources to track them, even when you're not consciously thinking about them. Participants with an unfinished goal performed worse on completely unrelated tasks. Their thinking was slower and less accurate. Not because they were dwelling on the unfinished thing but because their brain was still running it quietly in the background.

This is the Zeigarnik effect, named after the psychologist who first described it in 1927. It's the reason you can fall asleep thinking about that email you didn't send. Your brain does not distinguish between "I'll handle it tomorrow" and "I need to handle this now." An open task is an open task.

The critical finding from the 2011 study: making a specific plan eliminated the effect entirely. Not completing the task. Just writing down a concrete plan for how and when to deal with it. Once the brain had something external to rely on, it let go. The open tab closed.

So if your to-do list has been sitting in your head all day, your brain has been using space to keep it there. Writing it down, specifically and concretely, frees up that mental space so the rest of your thinking can run cleaner. That's not a productivity tip. It's a direct response to something your brain is doing whether you're aware of it or not.

The researchers also found that vague notes don't work as well. "Sort out the kitchen" does less than "clear the dishes and wipe the counters." The more specific the plan, the more the brain trusts it and lets it go.

Why Recurring Tasks Deserve Their Own List

Here is where the daily routine list comes in.

Every time you have to decide what to do next, you use mental energy. That sounds minor. It adds up fast, especially with ADHD. Deciding between tasks requires the brain's ability to plan, focus and switch between things (the researchers call this executive function, and ADHD makes it harder than it sounds). The constant low-level drain of choosing what to do next is real, and it hits before you've even started.

A routine solves this by making the recurring decisions in advance. You're not deciding whether to take your meds this morning. You already decided: it's on the routine list, it happens every morning and it requires zero deliberation. The decision has been made once. It's off your plate permanently.

Russell Barkley, one of the leading researchers in ADHD, describes the condition as causing a kind of time blindness: a difficulty connecting present actions to future outcomes. The daily routine functions as an external substitute for that missing internal structure. You don't have to feel motivated to start. You just look at the list and do the next thing.

The Two-List System in Practice

What I've landed on, after a lot of trial and error, is keeping the recurring and the non-recurring strictly separate.

The routine list lives in its own section. It covers every task that repeats daily and almost never changes. I don't rewrite it or think about it. It sits there as a reference and I move through it in the morning like a checklist. No decision-making involved.

The to-do list is different. It's for everything else: the one-off tasks, the things that came up, the things I need to handle at some point this week. This is the list that moves and changes and gets crossed off.

Together the first two work because they serve different functions. The routine list replaces decisions. The to-do list captures everything my brain would otherwise be trying to hold on to.

A 2019 qualitative study of young adults with ADHD found that structured morning routines, planning systems and reminder systems were among the most consistently reported self-management strategies. What the research describes and what I arrived at by accident turn out to be pretty much the same thing.

On Pen and Paper

Some people prefer using a physical pen and paper for good reason. I need the convenience of my phone app for sudden thoughts while walking along the street, travelling on a train or performing bodily functions.

The argument for the notepad aesthetic is practical and I would not argue against it. Phones are distracting by design. They carry notifications and the entire internet sitting one swipe away. A notebook has none of that. It also can't run out of battery, ping you with something else or accidentally close.

Some research also suggests that writing by hand engages the brain slightly differently from typing, with better retention of the content written. For ADHD brains already fighting for focus, removing digital friction from something as foundational as your task list is not a small choice.

The Bottom Line

The research is consistent enough to be worth acting on.

Keep two written lists, and keep them separate. One for your daily routine (the recurring tasks that happen every day) and one for everything else (the one-off tasks your brain would otherwise be quietly tracking).

Make both lists specific. Not "exercise" but "30-minute walk." Not "work on the project" but "draft the introduction." Specificity is what closes the open tabs in your brain's browser.

Keep both lists short. The to-do list especially: writing down 40 things is not a strategy, it's a new problem. Pick the things that actually matter today and write those.

Keep a third list entirely separate from both: a parking lot for every idea or impulse that arrives while you're doing something else. Write it down, leave it there and carry on. The brain stops chasing what it knows has been caught.

If you've been finding your thinking slower and cloudier than it should be on a given day, check whether anything has been sitting in your head unwritten since this morning. The fix is almost always simpler than it feels like it should be.

References

1. Alderson RM, Kasper LJ, Hudec KL, Patros CH. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and working memory in adults: a meta-analytic review. Neuropsychology. 2013;27(3):287–302. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23688211/
2. Masicampo EJ, Baumeister RF. Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2011;101(4):667–683. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21688924/
3. Kreider CM, Medina S, Slamka MR. Strategies for coping with time-related and productivity challenges of young people with learning disabilities and ADHD. Children. 2019;6(2):28. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6406620/
4. Gunnarsson AB et al. Self-care strategies shown to be useful in daily life for adults diagnosed with ADHD: a systematic review. Issues Ment Health Nurs. 2023. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01612840.2023.2234477
5. Zeigarnik B. Das Behalten erledigter und unerledigter Handlungen. Psychologische Forschung. 1927;9:1–85.