Two-List Method: Warren Buffett’s priority decision system

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 Two-List Method, often attributed to Warren Buffett, argues that goals sitting at positions 6 through 25 on your priority list aren’t harmless backups. They’re the reason your top priorities never get done. A meta-analysis of goal-setting research by Locke and Latham found that committing to fewer, more specific goals produced significantly higher performance than pursuing broad, diffuse objectives [1]. The problem isn’t your effort. It’s your refusal to eliminate.

This guide walks you through the complete Two-List Method and gives you the research that explains why it works.

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 process (the 5/25 rule) in one sitting
• How to handle the hardest part: letting go of goals 6 through 25
• When to use the Two-List Method vs. other prioritization frameworks like the Eisenhower Matrix

Key takeaways

• The Two-List Method works by making “not doing” as deliberate as “doing” for deferred goals.
• Locke and Latham’s meta-analysis shows committing to fewer goals produces higher performance than spreading effort across many [1].
• 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 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].
• 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’d work on the other 20 in his spare time, Buffett allegedly replied that those 20 should become his “avoid at all costs” list.

It’s 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.

Whether or not Buffett said this doesn’t 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 Two-List Method matters less than whether its elimination mechanism holds up under research scrutiny.

Why does the Two-List Method 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, demonstrates that goal specificity and commitment are the strongest predictors of performance [1].

Locke and Latham’s meta-analysis of over 35 years of goal-setting research found that goal specificity and commitment predict performance more strongly than goal quantity [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 Method 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’s 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 don’t exist in isolation. If goals 6 through 25 draw from the same pool of hours and mental energy, they’re not neutral – they’re in direct competition with your priorities.

Research by Emmons and King shows that pursuing competing goals reduces well-being and slows progress on all goals simultaneously [4].

Emmons and King (1988) found that people who reported high personal goal conflict showed greater negative affect, more physical illness symptoms, and slower goal progress than people whose goals were compatible — making goal elimination a health issue, not just a productivity preference [4].

This is where the Two-List Method differs from standard prioritization. The decision-making frameworks most people use help you rank goals from most to least important. But ranking alone doesn’t solve the problem.

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

How to run the Two-List Method: step-by-step process

The original story describes three steps. In practice, getting this right takes more granularity. Here’s a quick-reference sample you can copy and adapt:

Two-List Method – 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. Don’t edit, don’t rank, don’t judge.

The goal is volume. If you can’t reach 25, expand your time horizon or include goals you’ve been quietly carrying but haven’t 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 goal connect to what I care about most deeply?	Goals mismatched with values drain motivation over time
Impact potential	If I achieved this, how much would my life change?	Separates life-changing goals from nice-to-haves
Time sensitivity	Will this opportunity still exist in 2 years?	Prevents deferring goals that have closing windows
Personal energy	Does thinking about this goal excite or exhaust me?	Energy signals intrinsic motivation, the strongest predictor of follow-through

Score each goal 1-5 on each criterion and add the totals. The math won’t 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 (1-5)	Impact (1-5)	Time (1-5)	Energy (1-5)	Total
Launch side business	5	5	4	4	18
Get project management certification	4	3	2	3	12
Learn conversational Spanish	3	2	1	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 Two-List Method 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’re 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 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’m 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 haven’t committed to avoiding this goal – it’s still occupying mental real estate. A score of 2-3 means you’ve 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 Two-List Method isn’t 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 shouldn’t itself become a decision to agonize over.

Watch for one specific failure mode between reviews: the quiet backslide. This happens when 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. The goal re-enters your active mental stack without your noticing, and within three weeks you are back to 25 active priorities. If you catch yourself spending time on an avoid-list goal, stop and run a mini-review: is this goal 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 Two-List Method 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.

What should you do if you can’t narrow to 5 goals?

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

If you genuinely can’t 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 isn’t more important – it’s 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’re a multi-passionate person: The Two-List Method doesn’t mean you’ll 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 isn’t magic. The principle is: fewer committed goals outperform many half-pursued goals every time.

When should you use the Two-List Method vs. other prioritization frameworks?

The Two-List Method solves a different problem than most frameworks. Here’s when each one fits.

Two-List Method (5/25 rule)

• 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: Doesn’t 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: Doesn’t 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 Two-List Method handles a different challenge: deciding what to pursue across months and years. Use the 2-List Strategy to set your strategic direction. Use the Eisenhower Matrix or ABCDE method for daily execution within that direction.

Use the Two-List Method to decide what mountain to climb. Use daily frameworks to decide which path up the mountain to take today.

How does the Two-List Method adapt for teams and organizations?

The Two-List Method 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’s 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 wasn’t 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 Two-List Method makes this tradeoff transparent rather than silently adding to an already full plate.

How can you make the Two-List Method work with ADHD or unpredictable schedules?

If you have ADHD or manage a schedule that changes daily (parents, shift workers, freelancers), the Two-List Method 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” isn’t a goal – it’s a task. “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 Two-List Method 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 don’t 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

My experience contradicts the standard advice here: when I first tried the Two-List Method, I couldn’t fill 25 slots, and that gap revealed the real problem – not goal overload, but lack of commitment depth. The shift that changed how I think about Warren Buffett prioritization came from step 4: writing the avoid list forced me to confront 3-4 “someday” projects I’d been carrying silently, and naming them as deferred stopped the attention residue cold. The biggest value of this method isn’t the top 5. It’s the relief that comes from giving yourself formal permission to stop thinking about goals 6 through 25.

Conclusion

The Two-List Method solves one specific problem better than any other prioritization framework: too many genuinely good goals competing for too little time. The 5/25 rule 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 doesn’t matter. What matters is whether you’re willing to write down 25 goals and then look at 20 of them and say “not now.”

The hardest part isn’t choosing your top 5. It’s accepting that the other 20 were never going to get done anyway – and pretending otherwise was the real waste of your time.

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’re 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 Two-List approach.

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

5/25 rule is an alternate name for the Two-List Method, 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.

This article is part of our Decision Making complete guide.

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