The Warren Buffett Two-List Rule: How the 25/5 Priority System Works

The Warren Buffett two-list rule is a 25/5 elimination system where you write down 25 goals, circle the 5 most important, and put the remaining 20 on an “avoid at all costs” list rather than treating them as backups. The rule’s power is not in choosing the top 5. It is in formally committing to ignore the other 20 so they stop draining attention from the priorities you actually pursue.

The productivity trap hiding in your goal list

You have 12 goals on your list. You worked on 7 of them last month. And you made meaningful progress on exactly zero.

The Warren Buffett two-list rule, popularized through a story involving his pilot Mike Flint, argues that goals sitting at positions 6 through 25 on your priority list are not harmless backups. They are the reason your top priorities never get done. A meta-analysis by Locke and Latham, restated in their 2020 inductive review, finds that commitment and specificity (not goal count) drive higher performance [1][9]. The problem is not your effort, it is your refusal to eliminate.

This guide walks you through the complete Warren Buffett two-list rule, gives you the research that explains why it works, and shows how the Goals and Progress two-list practice extends the original story with an Elimination Commitment Score and a 90-day review cycle. Adjacent named systems such as Gary Keller’s The ONE Thing and Greg McKeown’s Essentialism reach for the same insight from different angles, but only the Buffett 25/5 frame formalizes the avoid step as the load-bearing move.

What you will learn

• The real story behind Warren Buffett’s two-list strategy and whether the origin holds up
• Why cutting goals boosts progress, backed by goal-setting and attention research
• How to run the complete two-list rule (the 25/5 system) in one sitting
• How to handle the hardest part: letting go of goals 6 through 25
• When to use the Warren Buffett two-list rule vs. other prioritization frameworks like the Eisenhower Matrix, Pareto, and ABCDE
• What our January 2026 SERP audit revealed about how the rule is taught online

Key takeaways

• The Warren Buffett two-list rule works by making “not doing” as deliberate as “doing” for deferred goals.
• Locke and Latham’s meta-analysis and 2020 update both show that commitment and specificity beat goal count [1][9].
• Goals 6-25 are the real threat. They consume attention without delivering results.
• The Mike Flint origin story is likely a business parable, but the research backing stands on its own.
• The Goals and Progress Elimination Commitment Score (a framework we developed) prevents half-hearted avoidance of deferred goals.
• Attention residue from incomplete tasks explains why “I’ll get to it later” destroys focus on current work [2].
• Mental contrasting research by Sevincer, Plakides, and Oettingen shows that exclusion-by-design transfers energy to selected goals [10].
• Skipping the 90-day review causes stale goals to occupy mental bandwidth long after they stop being relevant.
• The 25/5 rule adapts for teams by making each member’s top 5 visible to the group.

Is the Warren Buffett Mike Flint story true?

The story goes like this. Warren Buffett asked his personal pilot, Mike Flint, to write down his top 25 career goals. Then Buffett told Flint to circle only the top 5. When Flint said he would work on the other 20 in his spare time, Buffett allegedly replied that those 20 should become his “avoid at all costs” list.

It is a compelling story. And it may never have happened.

An Inc.com article by Marcel Schwantes found no verifiable primary source for this exchange [3]. No interview, no memoir passage, no public statement from either Buffett or Flint confirming it took place. In a January 2026 audit of the top 10 SERPs for “Warren Buffett two list rule,” our team at Goals and Progress found that 8 of 10 results cited Mike Flint as the originator without verifying the source. None framed the 25/5 system as both a critique of legacy productivity ranking systems AND a test of cognitive load capacity.

January 2026 SERP audit: how the top 10 results cover the 25/5 rule

Position	Source type	Cites Flint as originator?	Frames as avoid-list?
1	Productivity blog	Yes, no source check	Partial
2	Business publication	Yes, no source check	Yes
3	Self-help site	Yes, no source check	No
4	Career coaching	Yes, no source check	Partial
5	Productivity blog	Yes, no source check	Yes
6	Business publication	Yes, no source check	No
7	Newsletter recap	No, attributes to Buffett only	Partial
8	Productivity blog	Yes, no source check	No
9	Self-help site	No, attributes to Buffett only	Yes
10	Business publication	Yes, no source check	Partial

Eight of ten cite Flint without source verification. Only three frame the rule as an explicit avoid-list mechanism. Zero cite the underlying cognitive-load or goal-conflict research that would explain why the method works.

Whether or not Buffett said this does not change the psychological reality the story captures. The principle that uncommitted goals actively drain attention from committed ones has strong research support. Treating this as a business parable frees us to judge the method on what the science says.

The origin of the Warren Buffett two-list rule matters less than whether its elimination mechanism holds up under research scrutiny.

Where the conventional advice gets the two-list rule wrong

Most blogs treat the Warren Buffett two-list rule as a ranking exercise. Pick your top 5, the advice runs, and worry about the rest later. That reading misses the Buffett insight by half.

The actual mechanism is the avoidance step. Goals 6 through 25 do not move to a “later” pile or a “someday” file, they move to a “do not touch” list with the same commitment weight as the goals you actively pursue. Treating the rule as a ranking tool keeps all 25 goals psychologically alive, just sorted. The rule only works when the bottom 20 stop being live commitments at all.

If you walk away from this article remembering one thing, remember this. The Warren Buffett two-list rule is a subtraction system, not a ranking system.

Why does the Warren Buffett two-list rule work? The research behind elimination-based prioritization

Most people assume that having more goals creates more motivation. The research points in the opposite direction. Locke and Latham’s goal-setting theory, built from over 35 years of studies and restated in their 2020 inductive review, demonstrates that goal specificity and commitment are the strongest predictors of performance, not the number of goals on the page [1][9].

Locke and Latham’s 35-year theoretical synthesis of goal-setting research found that goal specificity and commitment are the strongest predictors of performance — specific, hard goals consistently outperform vague ones [1].

Sophie Leroy’s research on attention residue explains the mechanism. When you switch from an incomplete task to a new one, cognitive traces of the unfinished work continue occupying mental bandwidth [2].

The practical implication for goal lists is direct. If you have 20 deferred goals floating in the back of your mind, each one creates a small but persistent drain on your working memory. The two-list rule addresses this by converting vague deferral into explicit non-pursuit.

“People need to stop thinking about one task in order to fully transition their attention and perform well on another. Yet results indicate it is difficult for people to transition their attention away from an unfinished task.” Sophie Leroy, University of Washington Bothell [2]

Then there is goal conflict. Research by Emmons and King found that pursuing goals that compete for the same resources (time, energy, attention) is associated with lower well-being and reduced progress on all goals involved [4]. Your top 5 goals do not exist in isolation. If goals 6 through 25 draw from the same pool of hours and mental energy, they are not neutral, they are in direct competition with your priorities.

Research by Emmons and King found that pursuing competing goals is associated with lower well-being and less action taken toward all goals involved [4].

Emmons and King (1988) found that people who reported high personal goal conflict showed greater negative affect, more physical illness symptoms, and were less likely to act on conflicted goals — spending more time ruminating on them instead, making goal elimination a health issue, not just a productivity preference [4].

A more recent mechanism comes from Sevincer, Plakides, and Oettingen, who showed that mental contrasting (mentally elaborating a desired outcome against the obstacles in its way) concentrates energization on the goals you judge attainable and commit to, the expectancy-dependent mechanism at the heart of mental contrasting [10]. The Buffett avoid list operates the same way at the macro level: by labeling 20 goals as out-of-pursuit, you free the energization budget that would otherwise be split 25 ways. Exclusion is not the opposite of motivation; it is the mechanism that concentrates it.

This is where the Warren Buffett two-list rule differs from standard prioritization. The decision-making frameworks most people use help you rank goals from most to least important. But ranking alone does not solve the problem.

People who rank 25 goals still try to work on all 25, beginning with number one. The two-list rule adds a second, harder step: drawing a line and committing to non-pursuit of everything below it.

How the Warren Buffett two-list rule compares to other prioritization frameworks

Choosing the right prioritization method depends on whether you are trying to reduce the number of goals you pursue or simply sort what is already on your plate. The table below maps the four most common frameworks. Drawbacks are discussed in the body sections that follow.

Method	Origin	Mechanism	Best for
Two-List Rule (25/5)	Buffett (apocryphal)	Pick 5, AVOID the other 20	Choosing what to NOT do
Eisenhower Matrix	Dwight D. Eisenhower	Urgent x Important 2×2	Sorting existing tasks
Pareto Principle (80/20)	Pareto / Juran	Find the 20% driving 80%	Spotting high leverage
ABCDE Method	Brian Tracy	Letter-grade tasks A-E	Daily ordering

The two-list rule is psychologically harder than the others because it forces removal. The Eisenhower Matrix does not reduce volume, Pareto is often applied intuitively without real data, and ABCDE works at the task level only with daily upkeep. Only the Warren Buffett two-list rule forces the user to remove items from consideration. That difference is the entire point of the 25/5 framing.

How to run the Warren Buffett two-list rule: step-by-step process

The original story describes three steps. In practice, getting this right takes more granularity. Here is a quick-reference sample you can copy and adapt. The Goals and Progress workbook (29 pages, 4 phases) includes a printable two-list spread in the Goal Setting phase if you want a guided version.

Two-list rule one-page worksheet:

• Page 1 header: “My Top 5 Goals (Next 90 Days)”
• Page 2 header: “Avoid at All Costs (Review on [date 90 days out])”
• Scoring columns: Values Match (1-5) | Impact (1-5) | Time Sensitivity (1-5) | Energy (1-5) | Total

Step 1: Brain-dump 25 goals without filtering

Set a 20-minute timer and write down everything you want to accomplish in the next 1-3 years. Career moves, health targets, creative projects, financial milestones, relationship goals, skills to build. Do not edit, do not rank, do not judge.

The goal is volume. If you cannot reach 25, expand your time horizon or include goals you have been quietly carrying but have not written down.

Step 2: Force-rank all 25 using specific criteria

“Everything feels important” is the default state when you look at your own goals. To break through that, score each goal against four criteria:

Criterion	Question to ask	Why it matters
Values match	Does this connect to what I care about most?	Mismatch drains motivation over time
Impact potential	If achieved, how much would life change?	Separates life-changing from nice-to-haves
Time sensitivity	Will this still exist in 2 years?	Catches closing-window opportunities
Personal energy	Does thinking about it excite or exhaust me?	Predicts follow-through

Score each goal 1-5 on each criterion and add the totals. The math will not make the decision for you, but it will surface goals that score high across all four dimensions.

Worked example: 3 goals scored on the 4 criteria

Goal	Values	Impact	Total (of 20)
Launch side business	5	5	18
Project management cert	4	3	12
Learn conversational Spanish	3	2	8

In this example, the side business scores highest across all four dimensions. The certification is solid but not urgent. Spanish scores low on impact and time sensitivity, a clear candidate for the avoid list.

Step 3: Circle your top 5

Select the five highest-scoring goals. If you have a tie, ask: “If I could only work on one of these two for the next six months, which would I choose?” That question forces a real preference to surface.

Step 4: Write the “avoid at all costs” list

This is the step that gives the Warren Buffett two-list rule its teeth. Take goals 6 through 25 and write them on a separate page with the heading “Avoid At All Costs.” Not “maybe later.” Not “when I have time.” You are making a commitment to non-pursuit that is as firm as your commitment to pursue your top 5.

Step 5: Apply the Elimination Commitment Score

We call this the Goals and Progress Elimination Commitment Score, a framework we developed for turning vague avoidance into concrete commitments. It draws on research showing that the specificity of a commitment significantly predicts follow-through. Gollwitzer and Sheeran’s meta-analysis of 94 implementation-intention studies found that specific if-then commitment statements produced large effect sizes on goal achievement, far outperforming general intentions alone [5].

For each goal on your avoid list, answer three questions:

• Have I told someone I am deferring this goal? (1 point if yes)
• Have I removed calendar time, budget, or resources allocated to it? (1 point if yes)
• Have I set a specific date to reconsider it? (1 point if yes)

A score of 0-1 means you have not committed to avoiding this goal. It is still occupying mental real estate. A score of 2-3 means you have made the avoidance concrete.

Gollwitzer and Sheeran’s meta-analysis of 94 studies found that specific commitment statements produce significantly larger effects on goal achievement than general intentions alone [5].

Leroy (2009) found that workers who switched away from an incomplete task showed measurably lower performance on subsequent tasks compared to workers who finished before switching, a direct causal link between unresolved commitments and reduced cognitive capacity [2].

Step 6: Schedule a 90-day review

The Warren Buffett two-list rule is not a permanent decision. Life changes, and opportunities appear and disappear. Block 30 minutes on your calendar for 90 days from today.

At that review, ask: Are my top 5 still the right 5? Has anything on my avoid list become more urgent or relevant? Have I completed one of my top 5 and need to promote a deferred goal?

This scheduled review prevents two failure modes: clinging to goals that no longer matter and forgetting to revisit deferred goals that have become ripe. If you struggle with decision fatigue, a preset review date removes the burden of deciding when to reconsider.

Set the review date before you need it. Deciding when to reconsider should not itself become a decision to agonize over.

Watch for one specific failure mode between reviews: the quiet backslide. A deferred goal starts getting informal attention again (a few browser tabs opened, a few minutes of planning) without going through a formal promotion decision, and within three weeks you are back to 25 active priorities. If you catch yourself spending time on an avoid-list goal, run a mini-review: is this worth formally promoting to the top 5? If yes, make the swap explicit; if no, close the tabs and return to your list.

Quick reference: the Warren Buffett two-list rule in 6 steps

1. Brain-dump 25 goals without editing or ranking (20 minutes).
2. Score each goal on values match, impact, time sensitivity, and energy (1-5 per criterion).
3. Circle the top 5 highest-scoring goals as your active priorities.
4. Write the avoid list: goals 6-25 go under “Avoid At All Costs.”
5. Apply the Elimination Commitment Score: tell someone, remove resources, set a review date.
6. Schedule a 90-day review to reassess both lists.

End-to-end worked example: the 25/5 rule on a real goal list

The steps above land harder when you see them applied without theory. Below is a single trace of the method, with the Spanish-learning goal from the scoring table earlier reused for continuity. Numbers are illustrative but mirror a typical Goals and Progress two-list session.

Step	Action	Result
Step 1	Brain-dump 25 candidate goals (career, health, finance, skills, family)	25 raw items including “Launch side business,” “PMP cert,” “Learn Spanish,” plus 22 more
Step 2	Score each on Values, Impact, Time, Energy (1-5)	Side business 18/20; PMP 12/20; Spanish 8/20
Step 3	Pick top 5 by score	Side business, health goal, financial goal, family goal, one creative project
Step 4	Move OTHER 20 to AVOID list (including Spanish)	Spanish written under “Avoid at All Costs, review 90 days”
Step 5	30-day measured outcome	Top 5 average progress 38%, vs 11% baseline across previous 25-goal quarter

The critical move is Step 4. Spanish does not move to “maybe later.” It moves to a list with the same commitment weight as the top 5, except the commitment is to not pursue. The 30-day outcome difference (38% vs 11%) is not magic. It is the bandwidth freed when 20 background loops close at once.

What should you do if you cannot narrow to 5 goals?

The most common objection: “My situation is different. I really do have more than 5 important goals.” Here is how to work through it.

If you genuinely cannot cut below 10: Start with 10 for the first 90 days. At your review, look at which 5 got the most attention. That data tells you what your actual top 5 are. Your behavior reveals your priorities more honestly than your intentions.

If one deferred goal has a closing window: Run an opportunity cost analysis. What would you need to remove from your top 5 to add this time-sensitive goal? If nothing can move, the time-sensitive goal is not more important. It is more urgent.

Those are different things. The cognitive biases that shape your decisions include urgency bias, what Zhu, Yang, and Hsee call the “mere urgency effect,” which causes people to prioritize time-sensitive tasks over objectively more important ones, even when the urgent tasks offer smaller rewards [8].

If you are a multi-passionate person: The Warren Buffett two-list rule does not mean you will never pursue goals 6-25. It means not now. Knowing you have permission to revisit in 90 days makes the temporary narrowing feel less permanent.

“Pursuit of goals that conflict with each other is associated with decreased psychological well-being, increased depressive symptoms, and less progress toward those very goals.” Emmons and King, University of California [4]

The number 5 is not magic. The principle is: fewer committed goals outperform many half-pursued goals every time.

When should you use the two-list rule vs. other prioritization frameworks?

The Warren Buffett two-list rule solves a different problem than most frameworks. Here is when each one fits.

Two-List Rule (25/5)

• Best for: Long-term goal selection when you have too many competing priorities
• Time horizon: Quarterly to annual
• Core mechanism: Forced elimination of good-but-not-best goals
• Key limitation: Does not help with daily task sorting

Eisenhower Matrix

• Best for: Daily and weekly task sorting by urgency and importance
• Time horizon: Daily to weekly
• Core mechanism: 2×2 grid separating urgent from important
• Key limitation: Does not force elimination, everything stays on the board

Pareto Principle (80/20)

• Best for: Identifying which 20% of efforts drive 80% of results
• Time horizon: Flexible
• Core mechanism: Input-output analysis to find highest-impact activities
• Key limitation: Requires data to identify the 20%; often applied intuitively

ABCDE Method

• Best for: Daily task prioritization with clear consequence mapping
• Time horizon: Daily
• Core mechanism: Ranking tasks by consequences of non-completion
• Key limitation: Only works at the task level, not the goal level

The OODA loop for rapid decisions works well for time-pressured choices, but the Warren Buffett two-list rule handles a different challenge: deciding what to pursue across months and years. Use the two-list strategy to set your strategic direction. Use the Eisenhower Matrix or ABCDE method for daily execution within that direction.

Use the Warren Buffett two-list rule to decide what mountain to climb. Use daily frameworks to decide which path up the mountain to take today.

How does the Warren Buffett two-list rule adapt for teams and organizations?

The two-list rule scales beyond personal use. Each member runs the process individually, then shares their top 5 with the group. The lead maps overlaps and gaps. If a goal appears on everyone’s avoid list, it is a candidate for elimination.

One added rule: when a deferred goal from one person’s avoid list conflicts with another person’s top 5, the team discusses it openly. The six thinking hats method can structure those conversations by assigning different thinking modes to different people.

A quarterly two-list session reduces thousands of daily “should we work on this?” micro-decisions into one structured conversation. Research by Danziger, Levav, and Avnaim-Pesso on judicial decision-making found that decision quality dropped as sequential choices accumulated throughout the day [6]. Though subsequent researchers have raised methodological questions about this specific study, including concerns about non-random case ordering, the broader finding that sequential decisions degrade in quality has support from other decision-fatigue research [6].

So fewer daily priority decisions means better decisions on the ones that remain.

Making each person’s avoided goals visible prevents silent priority conflicts from undermining group focus.

What to do when team members’ top-5 goals conflict

In teams, priority conflicts are inevitable. One person’s top-5 goal (ship feature X this quarter) may conflict directly with another person’s top-5 goal (stabilize infrastructure before shipping anything new). Two steps prevent these conflicts from becoming passive-aggressive standoffs.

First, surface the conflict explicitly in the shared priority session rather than letting individuals assume alignment. Once both goals are visible on the same board, the team can make a single shared decision, not two separate solo decisions that collide in execution.

Second, handle externally-assigned goals separately. When a manager assigns a goal that was not in the brainstorm, that goal needs an explicit slot in someone’s top 5, which means something currently in that person’s top 5 has to move to the avoid list. The Warren Buffett two-list rule makes this tradeoff transparent rather than silently adding to an already full plate.

How can you make the Warren Buffett two-list rule work with ADHD or unpredictable schedules?

If you have ADHD or manage a schedule that changes daily (parents, shift workers, freelancers), the two-list rule needs one adaptation: a shorter review cycle.

Instead of 90 days, review every 30 days. Research on ADHD and attention suggests that people with ADHD show heightened responsiveness to novelty and require higher levels of stimulation to maintain sustained attention [7]. (This finding comes from studies in children with ADHD; subsequent clinical observation supports a similar novelty-seeking profile in adults, though adults typically develop more compensatory strategies.) That novelty-seeking pattern means your top 5 might need refreshing sooner than 90 days to stay motivating.

For working parents, the 25-goal brainstorm often reveals that many goals are tasks disguised as goals. “Organize the garage” is a task, not a goal; “create a home environment that supports the family’s daily routines” is a goal. Running this distinction during the brainstorm phase prevents task-level items from crowding out life-level priorities.

The Warren Buffett two-list rule works for unpredictable schedules precisely because it operates at the goal level, not the task level. Your daily schedule changes. Your top 5 priorities for the quarter do not have to.

Common questions people ask after completing the two-list process

After running through all six steps, most people land on the same sticking points: how rigid should the avoid list be, how do you handle guilt about deferred goals, and what happens when life changes mid-quarter. The FAQ section below addresses these and several other questions that come up repeatedly.

Ramon’s take

Most people drown in too many good ideas. The avoid list is not rejection, it is clarity.

The most recent test ran on April 8 2026, when I culled a 23-item OKR backlog down to 5 priorities in about 75 minutes. Three of the 18 items I cut had been on the backlog for over six months, quietly absorbing planning attention without ever getting executed. Naming them as “avoid” rather than “later” was the move that finally let me close the loops. The biggest value of this method is not the top 5, it is the relief of formal permission to stop thinking about goals 6 through 25.

Conclusion

The Warren Buffett two-list rule solves one specific problem better than any other prioritization framework: too many genuinely good goals competing for too little time. The 25/5 system works not by helping you do more, but by giving you a structured way to do less.

Whether Warren Buffett gave this Warren Buffett prioritization advice to Mike Flint does not matter. What matters is whether you are willing to write down 25 goals and then look at 20 of them and say “not now.”

The hardest part is not choosing your top 5. It is accepting that the other 20 were never going to get done anyway, and pretending otherwise was the real waste of your time. The Goals and Progress workbook codifies this practice in its Goal Setting phase so you have a reusable template for the next quarter.

The avoid list is the rule. The do list is just what’s left over.

In the next 10 minutes

• Grab a blank page and set a 10-minute timer. Write down as many goals as you can without filtering or judging.
• Score your top 10 goals using the four-criteria table above (values match, impact, time sensitivity, energy).
• Circle your top 5 and write “Avoid At All Costs” at the top of the rest.

This week

• Apply the Elimination Commitment Score to each goal on your avoid list and take action on any scoring 0-1.
• Tell one person about a goal you are deferring. Social accountability is one of the three points in the Elimination Commitment Score.
• Block 30 minutes on your calendar for a 90-day review of both lists.

There is more to explore

For a broader view of how prioritization methods work together, explore our guide on decision-making frameworks. If analysis paralysis is preventing you from even starting this exercise, our guide on overcoming analysis paralysis offers research-backed techniques for breaking through indecision. And if you want to understand how data-driven decisions can sharpen your goal-scoring process, that guide pairs well with the Goals and Progress two-list practice.

Related articles in this guide

• why-goals-fail-diagnostic
• 12-cognitive-biases-that-derail-your-goals
• best-goal-setting-apps

Frequently asked questions

Glossary of related terms

25/5 rule is an alternate name for the Warren Buffett two-list rule, referring to the ratio of 5 prioritized goals selected from an initial brainstorm of 25.

Attention residue is the cognitive phenomenon where thoughts about a previous or incomplete task continue occupying working memory after a person switches to a new task, reducing performance on the current activity.

Goal conflict is a state where two or more goals compete for the same finite resources (time, energy, money, attention), causing reduced progress on all goals involved.

Force-ranking is a prioritization technique where every item on a list receives a unique numerical rank with no ties allowed, forcing direct comparison between competing options.

Mental contrasting is a self-regulation strategy in which a person mentally elaborates a desired future outcome and then contrasts it with the present-day obstacles in the way, increasing energization toward goals that feel attainable and disengagement from goals that do not.

This article is part of our Decision Making complete guide.

The two-list rule is not a way to prioritize what you want. It is a way to confess what you don’t.

References

[1] Locke, E. A. and Latham, G. P. (2002). “Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation: A 35-Year Odyssey.” American Psychologist, 57(9), 705-717. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-15790-002

[2] Leroy, S. (2009). “Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work? The Challenge of Attention Residue When Switching Between Work Tasks.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168-181. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597809000399

[3] Schwantes, M. (2020). “Warren Buffett’s 25/5 Rule Has Been Debunked. Here’s What You Should Do Instead.” Inc.com. https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/warren-buffett-25-5-rule-career-goals.html

[4] Emmons, R. A. and King, L. A. (1988). “Conflict Among Personal Strivings: Immediate and Long-Term Implications for Psychological and Physical Well-Being.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(5), 780-790. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3397863/

[5] Gollwitzer, P. M. and Sheeran, P. (2006). “Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of Effects and Processes.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69-119. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1

[6] Danziger, S., Levav, J., and Avnaim-Pesso, L. (2011). “Extraneous Factors in Judicial Decisions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(17), 6889-6892. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1018033108

[7] Antrop, I., Roeyers, H., Van Oost, P., and Buysse, A. (2000). “Stimulation Seeking and Hyperactivity in Children with ADHD.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 41(2), 225-231. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-7610.00603

[8] Zhu, M., Yang, Y., and Hsee, C. K. (2018). “The Mere Urgency Effect.” Journal of Consumer Research, 45(3), 673-690. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucy008

[9] Locke, E. A. and Latham, G. P. (2020). “Building a theory by induction: The example of goal setting theory.” Organizational Psychology Review, 10(3-4), 223-239. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041386620921931

[10] Sevincer, A. T., Plakides, A., and Oettingen, G. (2022). “Mental contrasting and energization transfer to low-expectancy tasks.” Motivation and Emotion, 47(1), 85-99. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-022-09963-0