Two things I have noticed.
1. When I leave the list at home before a long drive to shop, the really important items have to be recalled. This favors short lists in general. Seriously, for most personal tasks, if your list is longer than say, 6 important items, you are overloading both your workload and memory. My opinion.
2. Last night, I noticed that my shopping list disappeared "somewhere" in my trip, despite the fact that I tied a pen to the little notebook with a cord.
Age creeping in? Not really. The damn thing(s) had fallen (as usual) between the car seat and the console, as I discovered after unloading groceries. I am making plans to stuff that space with some foam or bubble wrap to prevent this most noxious (and knuckle-scraping) failure mode.
This has been a problem for how long? 120 years?
Sometimes, I take a phone photo of the list.
I only left the phone home once, but was close enough to home to go get it. Usually there's a bluetooth indicator on the now-ancient 2018 infotainment display.
> Better lists, fewer impulsive decisions
Not really, at least for me. "-)
Generally, psychology doesn't work for me. My daughter has an Honors Psychology degree, and I am advising her to tell me the opposite of what she suggests, in honor of my cantankerous and contrarian nature.
Just store the list on your phone? It's better ux too. Unlike with pen and paper, you can check off items with a tap and rearrange them arbitrarily.
(It's a small phone and perfectly fits a very old camera case that holds some adapters in a pocket)
Any more than to pay. The advantage to paying with the phone is that through regular but not constant use, I am very unlikely to misplace it.
As noted, I sometimes do both. I think that my old shopping app fell by the wayside (as apps sometimes do) and I never replaced it.
I don't know if it makes me sharper but I am able to remain focused on the present and offload the thought to future me. This has been enormously helpful and makes me wonder why I never did it regularly beyond grocery lists. Even those lists would be a mad scramble of "what do I need" looking around and almost always forgetting something I need.
Why not the horoscope? Aquarius is in Jupiter right now so your brain is in retrograde.
The article fallaciously overstates the cognitive significance of shopping lists by misapplying general psychological concepts to a mundane habit. It relies on false cause and appeal to authority, conflating a standard compensatory memory mechanism with inherent intelligence. The author generalizes behavior, ignoring alternative motivators like memory deficits or anxiety. Furthermore, the piece lacks precise citations and improperly retrofits foundational research—such as academic note-taking studies—to fit its narrative. Ultimately, while it references factual cognitive capacity limits, the core claim that list-making signifies "sharper thinking" remains an unsupported editorial opinion rather than empirical science. Any article that contains "Psychology suggests" isn't worth reading.
HN isn't what it once was.
Recipes are the exception. If I'm cooking something I've never made before, there is no way I'm committing that ingredients list to memory.
Planning even a simple everyday shopping list is a sign of beneficial cognitive offloading and can be a marker of higher executive functions.
It’s not sharper thinking. If anything it’s compensating for a blunted memory.
I’m happy to say that I’m having success helping two elderly (an erstwhile teacher and a businessperson) remember things by just writing them down. Carry a pocket notebook attached with a simple pen.
Nothing fancy, put a dot or a circle, and start your list item. Done ones are ticked or crossed out, ignored ones are crossed out, and if the list fills up on a page, that is too behind › carry forward and re-write the item.
Early stage, but it seems to be working.
In fact sometimes I’ll pick up random things in my grocery store… chaos testing if you will.
I make lists for things with more annoying consequences, like packing for trips or even checking out of a hotel.
antonymoose•1h ago
Tagbert•1h ago
hinkley•1h ago
rramadass•1h ago
It is about how even so simple a task as creating a shopping list is a sign of beneficial cognitive offloading and can be a marker of higher executive functions.