You should plan to attend the SDA Friday Coffee Connections that meet on the first Friday of the month (unless there is a holiday) . You never know what great information you'll learn or even turn into an article to share with your other chapter members.

The SDA first Friday Coffee Connection started the new year talking about goals, resolutions, planners, and lists. If you haven’t started one yet, here are the hidden benefits of writing lists.

Monica Konnikova wrote in The New Yorker. “The article-as-numbered-list has several features that make it inherently captivating: the headline catches our eye in a stream of content; it positions its subject within a pre-existing category and classification system, like “talented animals”; it spatially organizes the information; and it promises a story that’s finite, whose length has been quantified upfront. Together, these create an easy reading experience, in which the mental heavy lifting of conceptualization, categorization, and analysis is completed well in advance of actual consumption—a bit like sipping green juice instead of munching on a bundle of kale. And there’s little that our brains crave more than effortlessly acquired data.”

We can take this and extrapolate this reasoning to understand the virtue of lists at the office and at home. Jessica Stillman in Inc. magazine enumerates why we write lists.

1. Lists bring order to chaos.
2. Lists work like memory aids. We all know the value of writing out a grocery list even if we leave it at home. Even if you have a short list, if you count them in your head, ‘I have 4 items to buy.’ you do better remembering them.
3. Lists are stress relieving. The things that you could or need to do in a day is sometimes infinite or so it may seem. “Narrowing things down to a bulleted list soothes the agitation of looking at the limitless.” Konnikova continues citing other research by “the social psychologist Robert Zajonc, who made his name studying the connection between emotion and cognition, [who] argues that the positive feeling of completion in and of itself is enough to inform future decisions.”
4. Lists feel definitive. Making a list of to-dos turns something infinite into something definitive. Again, Konnikova adds to this reasoning, “More importantly, a 2011 study investigation showed that the more information and options we have, the worse we feels. If we can reduce the clutter, the options, we feel better. Lists serve this purpose. The more we know about something — including precisely how much time it will consume — the greater the chance we will commit to it.”

So, the Coffee Connection discussion turned to what people were using to keep their lists and write down goals and to-dos. People were using everything from sticky notes to lists in notebooks. Many, many had journals. Several used Rocket Book Fusion. Almost like a whiteboard, it is reusable. It comes with a Fixion pen and microfiber cloth and there are many sizes and colors available.

A more traditional one was the Pellatini collection of monthly planners. 

Another person said she had gone electronic and uses One Note and electronic post it notes.

I like Danielle Kennedy of Kadima Leadership’s planner 

Lists simply make us feel better. When lots of people continue to work remotely and sit in home offices in the midst of chaos of work, home, children, and professional networks, lists can help us feel in control in the midst of chaos.

And, by the way, join SDA on its First Friday Coffee Connections. You never know what great information we’ll discuss. (We also had a lively discussion on membership ideas.) It clears the brain fog and gets you impassioned on whatever we discuss — guaranteed. The next one is Feb 5, at 11 am eastern.

Cited Sources:

“Steal This Soothing Year-End Ritual from Magazine Editors”, Jessica Stillman, Inc. magazine. https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/psychology-happiness-list-making.html

“A List of Reasons Why our Brains Love Lists”, Maria Konnikova, The New Yorker magazine, 12/2/2013. https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/a-list-of-reasons-why-our-brains-love-lists

Author: Deborah Gill, CPA, FSDA