Let's Make a List

recount them to me. Nevertheless, I will tell the captains of the ships and all the fleet together, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind from How Stuffworks dot Com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to be taught talking about lists. So that opening was from the Samuel Butler translation of the Iliad, and it proceeds a section of the Iliad that's often known as the Catalog of Ships. If you remember, Iliot has a

lot of sections where it kind of lists things. This is like the most famous list in it um. It's this long list of the ships and the leaders of the Achaean expeditionary force called the Denayans in that passage, and so to get a sense of the many items of the lists that follows, I think maybe we should we should read a couple more of them. They've got a lot of tricky Greek names, but we'll do our

best for them. I'll take the first one. Okay, Escalaphus and Almana, sons of Mars, led by people that dwelt in Asplodon and or common Us, the realm of Minnius. A Styachy, a noble maiden, bore them in the house of act Or, son of Asius, for she had gone with Mars secretly into an upper chamber, and he had lain with her. With these there came thirty ships. It sounds a big gossip, he doesn't. I thought, you're just naming ships, and now you're you're having to tell me

who's sleeping with who as well. Well, they're naming like the captains and the numbers of people and where they came from. But they also got to slip in a little bit of like a divine rumor. Yeah, all right, it continues. The fierce Abantes held Via with its cities Calcus, Rita Historia, rich in vines, Corinthus upon the sea, and the rock pushed town of Beam. With them were also the men of Caristus and Steira. Elephin Or of the race of Mars, was in command of these. He was

son of Calcodon and chief over all the Abantes. With him they came fleet afoot and wearing their long hair, behind, brave warriors who had ever strived to tear open the corsets of their foes with their long ash and spears. Of these there came fifty ships, and they that held the strong city of Athens, the people of great Erecttheus, who was born of the soil itself. But Jove's daughter Minerva fostered them and established him at Athens in her

own rich sanctuary. There year by year the Athenian youths worship him with sacrifices of bulls and rams. These were commanded by Menestheus, son of Peteus. No man living could equal him in the marshaling of chariots and foot soldiers. Nestor could alone rival him, for he was older. With him, there came fifty ships, but there are a lot of

these in the poem. Uh. This passage in the Iliad is interesting because there's a lot of debate about its origin and authorship, like is it part of the original poem? Is it a later insertion? Is it maybe a gradual accretion as audiences of the epic song in every locale wanted to hear their own local tribe and legendary hero incorporated into the story. But it's also something that calls attention to itself simply be cause it is a list.

It's a list of so it's a list and accounting of things, a list of numbers of ships, of their commanders, of the numbers of soldiers they brought. And it is right in the middle of a poem. Uh. And we might not often think of like a list of forces as having a very like literary or poetic quality, but I guess they're They're also scholars who would disagree with that. For example, Umberto Echo, the medievalist and Simiatitian and author including of the Name of the Rose, which I just

read for the first time this year, and I loved. Yeah, but Echo loved lists. He was pretty much obsessed with lists, and he clearly considered them not like a deviation from poetic form, but a really valuable form of art and object of study, So much so that in two thousand nine, when Echo was invited to curate an exhibition at the Louver, the subject of the exhibition he put together was the list. I wish I could have seen that, and umberto Echo

curated exhibit on lists. But he was interviewed that year by Der Spiegel and ended up talking a lot about his fascination with the power of lists. In the interview, one of the central examples he talks about is the catalog of ships from the Iliad. So Echo says in the interview, quote take Homer for example. In the Iliad, he tries to convey an impression of the size of the Greek army. At first, he uses similes, and he quotes as when some great forest fire is raging upon

a mountaintop and its light is seen afar. Even so as they marched, the gleam of their armor flashed up onto the firmament of heaven. But Echo continues, but he isn't satisfied. He can't find the right metaphor, and so he begs the muses to help him. Then he hits on the idea of naming many many generals and their ships. And then later in the interview, he says, quote Homer's work hits again and again on the tow posts of

the inexpressible. People will always do that. We have always been fascinated by infinite space, by endless stars, and by galaxies. Upon alexis, how does a person feel when looking at the sky, He thinks that he doesn't have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopped describing the sky, simply listing what they see. Lovers are in the same position. They experience a deficiency of language, a lack of words to express their feelings. But do

lovers ever stop trying to do so? They create lists. Your eyes are so beautiful, and so is your mouth and your collarbone. One could go into great detail. And I think there's something interesting in what Echo says there. What he says makes me think of other poems like the Song of Solomon and the Hebrew Bible and uh like you know, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, how do I love thee Let me count the ways I love you in the morning and in the afternoon. I'll love you in

the evening underneath the moon. Oh yeah, I will not eat it with a goat them, eat it on a boat, et cetera. Well, even in Sam I Am and the Green Eggs and Ham, I think there's something going on there with the use of a list to try to convey what cannot be expressed in in simple language. The

idea that, like one's discussed, is without bounds. You know, you have infinite disgust for the idea of green eggs and ham, and so all you can do is start listing all the ways you would not eat it, right, But then ultimately, like each one is, is each argument against trying the green eggs and ham is just as ridiculous is the last, because the whole argument is we'll try it, give it a try, and eventually he does.

But yeah, there's it's it's there's a lot of listing in that particular, But there's a lot of listing, I guess, and kind of lyrical um fiction, lyrical children's books especially. Another example that came up they will probably bring up again is the is the night before Christmas the naming of the reindeer, Like all the reindeer must be named and listed as part of this. There's there's almost kind of a magical spell quality to it. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah,

the recitation of figures of qualities. Another one I think of a great list in in poetic form that sort of conjures a magical environment of inexpressible quality is The Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti. Yeah, that's a fun one. We actually helped record a reading of the Goblin Market for movie. It was then food Stuff, now known as a Saver the podcast hosted by a Lauren Vogel bomb In any Reese Well have to include a link to that on the landing page for this episode. That was

a really fun episode. But it what what? What is? What happens in that poem? So the basic plot of the poem is it's about some a pair of sisters who are corrupted by these goblins who are selling sort of supernatural fruits at a market. But there there are these long sections where the goblins are just listing all of the fruits, and it goes on and on and on more and more fruits, and it eventually has this

cumulative quality where it suggests that the fruits are infinite. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there are there are a lot of encind of this, a lot in uh, you know, rich descriptions of places and settings, um where where the author will just just dive in head first and just describing one thing after the other, just really really list the sights and sounds

of a particular uh scene. Yeah, exactly. And so it's interesting that there's uh the use of lists and in the literary sense, I feel like has completely opposite usages in which it works both ways. One way is an author can use a list to sort of suggest infinity and inexpressibility, like qualities that are beyond measure and beyond

counting can be suggested by listing. But at the same time, you can use a list to start to make understandable and make manageable something that otherwise is is completely chaotic and doesn't make sense to you. Like another quote of Umberto Echoes in that interview is he says, quote, the list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want to make infinity comprehensible? It wants to create order, not always

but often. And how is a human being does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible through lists, through catalogs, through collections and museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. Well, certainly if you begin to list something and it gives you the ability to then break up that list into consumable parts. Like, for instance, the list of all organisms on the planet is an ongoing

list that has not yet been finished. Uh, we continually add new species to it, and yet by subdividing that list, we have a really good idea of of what the basic shape of life on planet Earth consists of. Yeah. Yeah, you can construct an evolutionary tree by making lists of organisms and then listing their characteristics and then comparing your lists. You know, I think of making a list is often similar to um, there's a process at the beginning of cleaning a messy room, you know, where at first a

mass is sort of a singular quality. It's just like a thing that you are faced with, and it has this unified evil, magic and aura that cannot be penetrated. And the best way to deal with it is start just sort of like making a catalog of Okay, what's actually here, and sometimes you'll make piles of things and stuff. Essentially you're sort of physically making a list out of individual elements. From what was originally just a mess. Oh absolutely, with a with a proper list of a task that

would otherwise seem insurmountable can seem beatable. Be it something that does have a definite end to it, say, like a like a long legal process, like say an adoption process. That was my experience. It was a very very long process to reach the endpoint. But you know, you divided it up, and indeed the first step is just like, well, let's look at the list. Likewise, though, we also take this same thing and we apply it to such situations

as say, human mortality. And if you take just the bucket list, well, not just that, but say Aubrey De Gray's approach to actual mortality, like, you know, how can we beat death? Well we can, Well, let's start by

just dividing it up into winnable avenues, like winnable battles. Yeah, and even though so Aubrey de Gray, if you're not familiar, he's like a gerontologist and general a smart guy, I think, but he he's tried to address the problem of aging and said, hey, let's not treat this as an inevitability. Maybe we can scientifically beat aging and stop you know, death from Old Age, from Happening Um and the way

he approached it. I think, though a lot of people disagree with his confidence in his you know, prediction that we can beat the problem. The way he approached it is, let's break death and aging down into a list of all of the things that go wrong. And that's a that's a brilliant way of looking at it. Even if he's wrong about what we can do. Just seeing the like actual number of problems in aging in new a rated and named it gives you suddenly this feeling of

power over the problem that you didn't have before. Yeah said, you start thinking, well, maybe this wizardy looking guy does have a point. Maybe we can beat death death It isn't isn't that big of a deal. He does have a magnificent beard, he's like he's like a resputant of life. And so I think maybe this should lead us to make a distinction. That's an important distinction when it comes to lists. I was thinking about, like finite versus infinite games.

There's also a big difference in in the way lists play roles in our lives depending on whether they're finite or infinite. Lists. Like we make finite lists of things. I think in order to better understand something, so like a list of organs in the human body. And then meanwhile, you make an infinite list in order to try to begin to address an infinite problem, like, you know, how do you express an unbounded feeling of love for somebody? You start listing the ways or how do you live

your life? Well, one way to do that is to try to make it to do list. Ideally, a to do list is not something where you're like, Okay, I'm done with all my tasks and I can just stop living now. It's just something that you're trying to prioritize the whole future you have in front of you. I have to admit that the the idea of infinite lists here is is maybe a little confusing to me, because I'm thinking, like, is there really an infinite number of

reasons that once they loves their spouse? I mean, there's there's probably a finite list of things. I mean, the the human experience is only so varied, right, Well, I mean you could keep breaking down reasons into smaller and smaller sub reasons. I guess, so, yeah, that's right. You could sort of of what you know, a foot race

with Achilles. Yeah, you can pull that number off. I mean, likewise, you could say the stars in the sky, to a certain extent, the human experience, there's sort of a small eye infinity there, though of course there is there is there is a definite, finite number out there. So I mean, in the same way you could say there is no such thing is an infinite game, because eventually we'll have the heat death of the universe and nothing can go

on forever. But I mean things that are things that are for your purposes infinite, like you never to do list is something you might cross all of the items off of, but that doesn't mean you've run out of things to do, all right, fair enough, fair enough. But then on on the other side of lists, one of the things that I often think about is how how funny it often is to me, just how funny listicals are to me. We've both worked in web publishing, and

oh man, there was a period. I mean, I guess listicles are actually still popular, like they do well on YouTube and end on, you know, on social media and all that. But but back in the day, I remember, especially like for Google Search and like homepage optimization, trying to make trying to make the house Stuff Works homepage clicky. It was. It was listicals all the way down. Oh yes, yes,

and some of them are were quite good. I remember even when we're putting out a bunch of towing articles at the time, there was one top ten that they spun out of that effort to a top ten Heaviest Things Moved by Man, which is a fun little article. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I mean I can enjoy good listical. I know, Robert. I think even the past expressed your love for for a good cracked listical, right, Yeah, I have enjoyed some of some of those cracked listicals in

the past. I also really like some of the um the ClickHole listicles. Those are amazing. Like I think it's like five or ten signs that your therapist is about to go to six flags after your session, you know, stuff like that I'm always on board for. Well, that's what ClickHole is great for, is like just highlighting the

bear absurdity that lies underneath the Internet content strategies. But yeah, I remember back in the day, like around two thousand and ten, some of the listicles going up on Discovery and TLC were so funny to me. It was like it would be things, you know, like ten backyard games your Golden Retriever will love. Yeah, I think so. So there are a few different appealing aspects of the top ten, right, I Mean A big one is that it's easily absorbed, the ideas that I'm I'm not I'm in a hurry.

Maybe I don't even really want to read this article, but it's a top ten. So at the very least I could scan the ten items and I kind of instantly want to know what made the list and what didn't. I think that's very Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Scannability is a big part of it, right, especially with things that are because so there are different types of top ten's obviously or ten or list based things. Sometimes

there are a process. For instance, the so many wiki how articles that are a list of ten steps to do something including there there. I found one the other day for faking your own death, so it's everything from fixing a toilet to faking your own death. My favorite eh how article of all time that I ever found, I think I checked recently. It's not still up, but

it was how to pray for money. Um, yeah, so that so there's that area, and then there's the ranking of things like the ten best superhero movies, um or, and so you want to click on that because you just want to Maybe you're just you're comagined and you just want to notice what they didn't include and and shame them for what they did include. Well, the top ten ranking thing is I think popular for multiple reasons.

Number one, I mean, humans, even though we don't like to admit this, we clearly look to other people to form our own tastes, right, you know, we we start to think, I should have my own ideas of what's the top ten movies in next category, and then like looking at other people's ideas gives you something to react to, either to base yours on theirs, or to react against it or whatever. But it's also popular, I think for the same reason that like You're doing it wrong articles

are popular. It feels like an aggressive, opinionated statement that is highly tempting to argue with. Right, yeah, and and certainly sharing like five five films that shaped you or whatever, you know, whatever the current version of it that's going around on social media is a great statement of self. You know, it's say it's it's a way of sort of summing up your character in a selection of films

or books or albums or what have you. Yes, at the same time that it's easy to share by it's easy for audience members to share because you know, it's fun to say, I disagree. How could they leave off you forgot X? Yeah? We we could. I mean, we even we don't do top ten episodes, but one of the most common types of emails we get is I can't believe you forgot to mention X when we're like talking about, you know, giving a selection of examples of something.

Whenever we do a list. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and sometimes we do really forget to mention things, or we you know, we have them in the notes and we don't mention. The other times we just don't know about them. Yeah, that's the the other problem about trying to make any kind of fully inclusive list. Yeah. So, I think for the rest of this episode, we we should try to think about what what is the role of the list in human culture? And for a couple of things we're

going to focus on. I think one should be the to do list and the psychological power of the to do list. The other one would be the idea of a list as a type of literature media. Why is it so popular? Why why does it work? Yeah, I think it's interesting to think of lis even just purely in an entertainment um and and even outside of the necessity their necessity and things like crafting, mixology, cooking, building

a Lego kid. I mean, those are the things where you you need a series of steps to follow in order to get it right. Oh man, what is the Is there like a visual version of a s MR? I don't know what when you just get like goose bumps, like seeing an image of a toy from your childhood. For me, it would be Lego instructions and they've only

gotten better, Joe. That's the thing when when I read let current Lego kit instructions versus older Lego instructions, that they're just they's they're so clear and precise, that can follow them so easily. Um, they should do instructions for everything. You're just mocking me, like I should leave the studio and go buy some Legos to play with right now. You should go buy yourself Hogwarts and and have at it. That one. That one has a lot of steps to it.

I keep saying I think one of the best things about having kids has got to be that you get to play with legos again. Yeah, and then step on legos again. The Harry Potter sorting hat, by the way, specially painful to step on. That's probably the most painful lego I've ever stepped up anyway. Outside of children's play things, you also find a lot of lists in um you know, in in in and say video games for all ages. Well, a lot of video games are highly acquisitive in nature,

you know, you accumulate stuff in them. Oh yeah, Like the main example, UM I I have right now is Fallout seventy six because that's that's a game I'm currently playing. And uh I stopped though to think the other day is as we were talking about doing this episode, that

there's man man. There sure are a lot of lists in this game because you open your inventory and what is it a series of lists like there's a great there's a big list, and then you can break down your list into sub lists of the various weapons are humors, bits of scrap, junk notes, uh, hollow tapes, etcetera. So it's just one big list. And then when you when when it comes to the things you're trying to do in the game. There are a whole there's a whole

other like wide array of to do lists. You get your like your main quest items, your side quests, your daily quest. Uh, it's just a game full of lists. The story is a list of mission objectives and what well, I mean, I haven't played seventy six. I assume it's

like the other followut games. Oh yeah, basically the same concept. Yeah, and it's it's just a list of things you have to have to get done, which is kind of weird that we we sometimes retreat from our real life of to do lists and then we go into a fantasy world where we have, you know, another list that we have to do, and it's not necessarily this just simple equation of well, your your your real life list is harder to do and you have it's it's you know,

the video game is a world in which everything is simplified. No, sometimes the to do list is impossible in the video game world as well, Yeah, for for varying reasons. But but yet we we go to it and we expect it to be there now here. Here's another question though, aside from like internet content type listicles, I mean, like lists within broader works of fiction or or something. What What is it that makes a list inherently entertaining? Some

lists are boring and other lists are really engrossing. I remember looking at lists of things in my like Star Wars Illustrated Encyclopedia when I was a little kid, and I was like, this is a good list. Oh yeah. When it when it comes to the lore and the glossary of any kind of created world, and I'm instantly on board for any of that, Like things like, uh, you know, the appendix to The Lord of the Rings or Dune. The Dune Glossary is almost as good as

the novel itself. Absolutely, The Dune Encyclopedia, even though it's not technically Cannon was one of my favorites when I was younger. Um, yeah, pretty much any book that I really get into, the Second Apocalypse saga or the Game of Thrones books, you know, like give me, give me an alphabetized list of all the names, places, and things in a given universe, and I'll just I'll read through it. I'm currently reading the Harry Potter Monster Book to my son.

Or it's an alphabetical listing of various magical beasts from the setting. He does he get down with lists two um I will. I don't know if he's as down with lists as I am, but he's really into Harry Potter, so that works. But but yeah, outside of that though, like like, for instance, Lord of the Rings, Okay, like it's kind of built around a whole list, isn't it.

I mean you kick off the whole novel with this list of rings and who has them, and it's vital to the the basic setup of the entire saga, even better than it's a rhymed list though. Yeah, yeah, the whole three rings for Elphin King's under the sky, seven for dwarf lords in their Halls of Stone. It's usually read with some degree of drama, but I often wondered, like, what if it what if it was just this was just written on a like a cocktail napkin, and Sauron

just had it on hand. He's like, all right, what am I making today? Okay? I gotta make three rings for Alvin kings under the sky, seven for dwarflords in their Hall of nine geez, nine for mortal men doom to die. That's a lot. I don't know why I said nine, okay, with the one for me on my dark throne right here in more door, etcetera. But then, of course, because he's the lord of mort Or, the to do list just ends up gloating right and in the darkness behind them. Yeah, I've never thought about it

that way. I like that it's it's Saron's to do list from before the rings were made. So I think that should steer us into talking about the power and nature of to do list. But first we should take a break and we come back. We'll discuss some of the psychology of to do lists. Than all right, we're back, Robert. Do you find to do lists useful? Yeah, to a

certain extent. I mean, so sometimes it's a matter of just having a reminder, right, Like on my hand, I have the remnants of it to do list for today that include picking up two items from from various stores, Otherwise I might forget them if I didn't have them written on my hand. And likewise, if I have more than two items to pick up at a given store, I need a list of those otherwise I'll forget them. But yeah, I mean a LISTA lists are necessary for

tackling various larger projects. And especially if you're approaching something from a project management standpoint, uh, something like say launching a podcast. That's the kind of checklist we see a lot around here when there's a new podcast that rolls out.

When we roll that invention for existing for for instance, there was a standardized list of things that needed to be done, that needed to be figured out, that needed to be started or assigned to somebody else, and you you would not have a finished product until you've finish that list. So, I mean, I have to like to do list because they are one way that things get done. Well, you're clear right, I think that there is clearly a

difference between good lists and bad lists. When you're trying to come up with a to do list and it's sort of like you know it once you're in it. To like, you like, this isn't a good list, it's not working for me. But I was trying to think, what are the actual characteristics that make it to do list helpful rather than something that just hangs over you like a wraith that's making you feel anxious and depressed. Well, they need to be things that you can easily check off.

I mean, it seems like a no brainer, but they need to be things that are achievable in the short term. So like, you can't have a checklist that says like sarrance checklist wasn't enslave Middle Earth and check it off. No, he started small, building various magical rings to work up to this. In fact, maybe he should have started even smaller. Uh he should maybe should have been thinking about the individual materials he needed for the ring, and like making

the mold and all that. Uh So we'll get into this in a minute. I was wondering, like, obviously there's a million self help books and productivity seminars and all that about about like how to have better to do lists and and be more productive. But I was wondering, is there anything that draws on actual psychology research. Um. One thing I came across was a chapter about to do lists in a book about willpower by one of

the authors was the psychologist Roy Baumeister. Uh So it was by Baumeister and Tyranny, and I thought some of their points were were kind of interesting, some of them were kind of obvious, others I was interested in the reasoning behind them. So one of the things that they point out in this book is that studies show that often when we get asked to like list out our goals and priorities, a lot of our goals are in

conflict with one another. And this this is something that I don't know should be kind of obvious to us, but it's clear that we just don't really think about it this way until we like list things out and realize things are in conflict. A common example is like when you have two different goals that are both competing for time you don't have. So like, you're already busy and you're asked to make a list of your goals.

And your goals include things like, you know, spend more time on ex personal project and also spend more time with family, and so like, those goals are obviously in competition with each other for an already scarce resource. Or things can be like that with money. You know, they're competing for a limited pool of finite resources that you have. You know, I can't help me. Be reminded of of a ClickHole headline I saw recently, uh titled the only

thirty one thing standing between you and your dreams. I'm scrolling through it now, Uh, it's gout entries like your dog crippling doubt your past. See that's that's a wonderful, terrible list because you're including some things that are reasonably specific but just also huge and vague and totally not actionable. Yeah. So so in this book a great example of of like when you know, how our goals can come into conflict with each other. So the authors talk about, you know,

Benjamin Franklin was obsessed with maximizing his life. He was a maximize er, sort of a life hacker type dude, and he tried to do this by making to do lists about everything, like huge to do list for daily virtues to fulfill, so like one every day you'd have to fulfill, like like a frugality and industry. But he found, of course these things came into conflict because he's trying to be frugal, so he ends up having to spend a lot of time like doing things for himself instead

of paying somebody else to do them. But then that prevents him from doing work, so he finds he's less industrious. So you know, these things are large in general, and the goals are actually fighting each other. And so the authors point out that like psychology and neuroscience, research does not always show that thinking about lists of goals is helpful. It's only helpful in some cases given certain kinds of

lists and goals. Like the psychologist Robert Emmons and Laura King demonstrated in a series of study, is that that quote the result of conflicting goals is unhappiness instead of action. Again, that might seem kind of obvious, but how many obvious things do we get stuck in a rud over all the time? Uh So, First of all, they found when people when people make a list of goals and and think about them, if the goals are in conflict, First of all, people end up worrying a lot. They end

up The psychological term for this is rumination. And that's the word that just means like repetitive negative thought patterns, worrying cycles. The second thing is they actually get less done when they think about these lists of goals. People ruminate, not only ruminate, but they ruminate instead of acting to get things done. And productivity on reaching goals decreases. And

then finally, physical and mental health suffers. People report more negative emotions, more depression and anxiety, and more physical sickness. So thinking about lists of your goals listing out the things you want itself is not enough to make you become happier, more active, and all that. It really matters what those goals are and how they're formulated, and when they're in the wrong format, it could leave you worse

off than before. Who reminds me of a bit of wisdom that I've seen numerous times about New Year's resolutions, You know, about how you set too lofty and new Year's resolution and you're just you're you're kicking your own self in the pants, like there's that's not going to do you any good. You've just you've just gone ahead and made this formalized version of your own impending failure.

Well when really you should you should scale it back more and make something that's again more actionable and more achievable and fits in with the the other commitments in your life. You know, I wonder if sometimes we set really ambitious goals for New Year's resolutions because subconsciously we want to make sure that we will have an excuse to quit trying sooner. I tell you one I always hate is I forget what it's called, but it's like a challenge to write an entire novel manuscript during the

month of no November nano remo. Yeah, which is the with the I can't scarcely think of a worse month to try and commit to a daily writing project. The November that you're getting right into the holidays, there's Thanksgiving, You're trying to to get a lot of work done, like they should do it. More like I'm thinking it's like in April. Maybe it's a challenge to go swimming outdoors every day of January or something. I mean, everyone

smile is just gonna vary. But that is always my my realization is like I say, oh, that that thing going on, and I'm like, oh, it's no, it's November. This is this is a complete waste of my time. I'm just remembering what our November last year was, like, Yeah, somehow I didn't have time to fit in writing a novel while we were also launching an extra podcast. Right, uh so, But anyway, so if sometimes goals are in conflict, right, sometimes this just happens, and thinking about those goals can

paralyze you make you unhappy. How do you resolve this? I mean, you would think one way would be to reformulate your list of goals in order to remove conflicts. So one way to do this is think about the time horizon of your top goals. I think it's probably easier for things on your list to remain in conflict when they're more general and when they're more long term time. Thinking about time helps you think about like, Okay, what do I really care about this month? What do I

really care about this week? For instance? Come up with an idea for a novel in November? You go and and that time horizon thing really does matter in multiple ways, like Some studies show that short term goals are more effective at at causing action and improvement than long term goals, can sometimes be better than no goals at all. One example side it is this research conducted by the psychologist Albert Bandura and Dave Schunk on kids from seven to

ten who are taking this self directed math course. So the kids are trying to learn how to do certain kinds of math problems, and they're separated into four groups. One group gets this set short term goals. Their goal is to do six pages of math problems in every one of seven sessions. And then a second group has a second has a different goal. It's to complete forty two pages of math problems at the end of seven sessions. So these two goals, if both completed, should give you

the same level of progress. And then there was a third group that didn't have any particular goals, in a fourth group that didn't do math exercises, and the results were the kids in the short term group did a lot better. They completed more problems, they were better at solving problems at the end of the course. Kids in the long term group who were just like, Okay, get it all done at the end of the course did no better than kids who had no goals at all.

And if you think back to your own childhood or maybe your own adulthood, you can you can probably see that that really rings true. At least it does to me, like if I didn't have work broken into smaller chunks, I would never get it done now. On the other hand, at the same time, there's research that's found that particularly an older students around high school age, thinking about long long term goals is associated with better outcomes like academic

performance overall. And a common explanation here that that might be going on is that once you're older, it's easier for you to see a connection between your long term goals and your short term work, like short term tasks are sort of they're given a motivation boost when you

think about what your long term goals are. So you could maybe think about these two results sort of in conflict, but I don't think they're necessarily in conflict, because the possible takeaway is it's good to keep long term goals in mind to help motivate you as long as they're not conflicting. But you also, in order to get stuff done, you need to chunk things down. You've got to put your you've got to formulate your to do list items in small, discrete chunks of work with clear goals. And

that's what we're talking about with sour On earlier. You know, if it's just conquer all of the lands, that that's not going to work as well. You've got to separate, break it into smaller tasks. Right. But likewise, having having that overall goal of subjugating Middle Earth probably helped him put even more effort into making that one ring really dope, you know, I think so. Yeah, So it's like visualize the end, but focus on what you have to do

right now. The very next thing. Another important insight that they side is just it's important to be flexible. Like if you try to over rigidly plan out to do lists of things, uh that can that can actually get you bogged down. In one example they side is research that found that people who made monthly plans for goal attainment did better than people who made rigid daily plans for goal attainment, just because the day to day things

come up, you get you get sidetracked. You need to have a plan that has has some some wiggle in it if something comes up today and you can't do your thing today. Yeah, yeah, I guess I can definitely see that with bigger projects. I'm if I'm trying to think on a day to day basis, something's going to wreck that plan. But if I'm thinking more weekly and monthly, like by the end of this month, I will have reached this point more or less, then that's it. That's

it that tends to work. Yeah, totally, though, I would say, like each day within a monthly goal setting thing, it's good to like plan out more minute parts of the day as you get You shouldn't wait till right then you get into like do your forty two pages by the end kind of thing. You just never do it. Okay. The next big thing that these authors bring up about to do lists is going back to something we've talked about on the podcast before, which is the Zigarnic effect. Oh, yes,

we've discussed this, We've discussed in our Tetris episode. And uh, there was another one too. I'm trying to remember the the incomplete unfinished one. Yes, yes, about various bits of artwork, etcetera literature in which there is some incomplete aspect to the thing. Right, Well, it certainly applies to that, because the Zigarnic effect is the brains tendency to be brought back to incomplete tasks and to remember them better than

complete tasks asks. So it was. It was a concept originally expressed and studied in the nineteen twenties, I think in nineteen seven by a Russian psychologist by the name of bloom O Wolfovna Zigarnik who lived nineteen hundred to ninety eight, and supposedly this came about after she and a colleague were discussing watching waiters in a restaurant and how the waiters could remember all of the details of the order one of their tables until the check was cleared,

and then once the check at that table was cleared. It was like their brains were just wiped. They forgot everything. The task is complete, and therefore the the information, Uh,

the various road signs to completion are no longer necessary. Yeah, exactly so uh to to sum it up in a two thousand and eight social psychology textbook by Roy Bauminster and Brad Bushman, uh the author's right quote, the Zigarnic effect is a tendency to experience automatic intrusive thoughts about a goal that one has pursued but the suit of

which has been interrupted. That is, if you start working toward a goal and fail to get there, thoughts about the goal will keep popping into your mind while you're doing other things, as if to remind you to get back on track to finish reaching that goal. So, given this, like, the Zigernic effect is often cited as an explanation of what we talked about earlier, rumination, you know, unproductive patterns

of recurring negative thoughts. Uh. The Zigernic effect can kind of like just pull you out of whatever you're doing right now and make you start thinking about that thing you're worrying about the goal. You haven't attained the task you haven't finished, but it's also used to describe more mundane stuff like earworms and music, like, if you hear part of a song play, your brain may try to keep completing the task of the song until you actually

are able to listen to the whole thing. And as personal anecdotal evidence of this, you ever notice how, at least if you're like me, you're more likely to get a song stuck in your head if you hear it in an unfocused way, like playing in a grocery store or on the radio in a car, as opposed to a song that you like, sit down and listen to. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It certainly it makes for more more of

a chance encounter. Yeah, um, not a deliberate encounter, but yeah, those will be the times where I leave the grocery store and then there's this song stuck in my head. I feel like, literally, at least seventy percent of the time that somebody says to me, why are you singing that song? I don't even realize I was singing it. And then what I realized is it was playing in the store. But that seems perfect because like in the store, you walk in and out, you're not really paying attention

to the music. You hear a bit of it and it just gets lodged in there, and then your brain is like trying to play it back and and and complete it um. But we should note that it appears that the Sigartic effect has a sort of mixed replication history, like some studies replicate the effect, others fail to. So if we assume that it is real and based on experience, I think it does at least somewhat seem to be real.

There may be conditional qualities to it that we don't fully understand yet, and one complication to the effect, for instance, seems to be related to creating to do lists. So I just want to mention one study by Roy Baumeister and E. J. Massa Campo called consider It Done. Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals, and this was in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

in two thousand eleven. So this paper, they they recount a number of studies that the authors did to test the persistence and intrusiveness of thoughts about an upcoming finished task like an exam in school, and a few examples of how to test things would be like testing how often people became distracted while trying to read something after being made to think about that upcoming task, or testing

how primed this. The subjects were to complete a partial word puzzle with a task related solution word, so like, if you're given like e x blank, do you complete that as exam or as something else? So they found evidence of the Zigaric effect that people who had been made to think about an upcoming task and it wasn't something they had finished yet, it did become an intrusive,

repetitive thought for them. But they found that you didn't actually have to go complete the task in order to find it less intrusively occupying your thoughts, less likely to cause rumination and distraction. You just had to come up with a concrete plan basically a to do list of concrete steps about how you would solve the problem. Uh So, to quote from their abstract quote. Allowing participants to formulate specific plans for their unfulfilled goals eliminated the various activation

and interference effects. Reduction of the effects was mediated by the earnestness of participants plans. Those who ultimately executed their plans were those who also exhibited no more intrusions. So it's not just that the people who made the concrete steps uh did better with eliminating the zigonic effect intrusions, also the ones who actually ended up being successful in their plans that was correlated with it. So it's like it's almost like your brain can tell whether you're taking

your own plan seriously. And to quote more from their abstract quote, committing to a specific plan for a goal may therefore not only facilitate attainment of the goal, but may also free cognitive resources for other pursuits. Once the plan is made, the drive to attain a goal is suspended, allowing goal related cognitive activity to cease, and is resumed

at the specified later time. Well, this makes a lot of sense of certainly when when compared to experience, because I can think of definite times in my life where there's been like some big thing I've got to start, and just by starting it, just by safe, for instance, looking at the list of things to do and then calling it a day, you know, which ultimately doesn't really it doesn't really get that much done on the task, but you began the process, and just by doing that,

you know, you can feel better. You can feel like you have more control of the situation. Oh well, thinking about or or making a list of things to do. I would say that is really getting something done. That's maybe the most important part of what you've got. But but in another way, you didn't actually do anything. It's kind of like cleaning cleaning the room. An essential step is formulating a game plan and deciding what you're gonna tackle first so that you can act. But you haven't

actually cleaned anything yet. Yes, but but it's it's a crucial part. And in fact it's good enough to not only help make you more likely to get the project done in the end, but also to make you worry less about it until you get there. It's a twofold benefit, more actual success at goals and less rumination in the meantime.

And I think this also makes sense from a sort of imagining, like a cognitive neuroscience point of view, because if you think about it, so like the Zigaric effect is sometimes interpreted as like, uh, the unconscious mind sort of pinging the conscious mind with like an outstanding problem. It's like, hey, remember this, you need to get on that. Hey remember this, And but what it really is asking for is the help of the conscious mind, and the conscious mind, we tend to think, is linked to the

part of the mind that has executive control. Executive control is good for what planning, Like, the conscious mind is good at coming up with a list of steps of things you need to do to solve a problem, something that the unconscious mind is not very good at. And this is where executive time comes in, right, the amount of time we spend each day in executive time. No, that's the exact opposite. That's like period time. So you

rope in the conscious mind for for executive action. Yeah, but I think it appears that across this stuff like that that very specific concrete plans are more useful and more psychologically satisfying. Uh So. One of the things that you know, productivity experts often observe is that say, like, if you're trying to, like, you know, fix some stuff around your house, don't have a step in the plan

that's like fix the shower. The step in your plan should be the very specific first concrete step you need to do to fix the shower, like go to Lows and buy this part that I need and have the name of the part, or you know, and if you if you're not at that stage. Yet the thing should be find out what part I need on the shower by going to by looking it up on the internet.

I do think that's a useful insight. Like if you're finding if you've got to to do list, but you're stuck and you're not getting through it, probably one way that you can get unstuck is take the items in the list and try to break them up into smaller parts figure out how they can be subdivided. All right, on that note, we're going to take a quick right, and when we come back more on lists and why we love them. Thank you, thank you. All right, we're back.

So clearly, as we mentioned earlier on lists are huge in web content, right, we know the power of list uh, this is something that web traffic analysis clearly shows. Enumerated list type articles have an extremely powerful appeal. They're clicky. Why Well, like I said earlier, I think a lot of it is ease of absorption and or action. So it's like ten images or names, uh, you know, and you probably don't even have to read the rest of

the text. You can just scan it. But then also like ten steps being a big thing, like ten steps that sounds doable. I can do ten steps. What you know, what, what's the offering? Is it ten steps to a better life, ten steps to a cleaner house? Uh, ten steps to a better marriage? I mean these are all uh you put it the phrase it like that. I'm like, well, let's let's try it. Well, I mean yeah, ten steps

I think are very popular. They're popular maybe for a different reason than a lot of other kinds of enumerated articles. Are useful because the steps thing is like a to do list. It says, this is not an infinitely complex, impossible problem. This is a problem with ten parts, and

you can do one part at a time. It makes it seem like, oh, yeah, I could actually begin this right and like that alone can be empowering, even if you have no intention of following entities just no, even just not even reading the list, just knowing that that process could be broken down into ten steps can feel kind of liberating. Yeah. So nine rings for men doomed to die. Okay, so that's one step, or maybe that's the third step. I don't remember what order they come in,

but Elvin King's our first joke. First, the elves are picky if you don't take care of them first, they asked to see your manager. But but to come back to the scannable nature of list, I think that's big too, because it's really important. Yeah, because there there have been recent studies. In fact, there was the most recent one

just came out in the last few weeks. I think looking at how we easily overestimate our understanding of a topic based on say a headline of an article or an article preview and Facebook, Um well yeah, I mean there's like you remember the the illusion of explanatory depth episodes, where that's somewhat different, But it's that you know, there can be a thing that we're familiar with because we are exposed to the concept of it a lot, and it gives us the false impression that we understand how

it works. Like you know, you're you're around bicycles all the time, so surely you can draw one with all the parts accurately placed, right or can you? It seems so simple, But it turns out a lot of people can and it's just like, yeah, you see them enough that you just think, well, I must understand this. And I think the same is true for more abstract conceptual topics,

like you know, issues in politics. You think you understand how it works because you've seen the name referenced in headlines right or you've or maybe you've seen something broken down on a list of talking points, etcetera. Uh Now, speaking of social media, it's also worth pointing out that something like your Facebook or your Twitter feed is it's not enumerated, but it is essentially a list. Yes, it is also not a fineite list because they're designed to

be infinite, infinitely scrollable. But but these are lists, and many times a day we're probably checking in to see what the list is offering us this time. Well, I think that also goes to the fact that lists are appealing. Listical type articles are appealing on the Internet because they're easily scannable for content, in the same way that your

news feed is easily scannable for content. You know, like on Facebook, if you're just sitting there scrolling and letting Facebook ravage your brain, you are not You're not reading everything you're scrolling past. You know, You're just like scrolling until your eye hits something and you look at that for a second and you're like, oh, there's that, and then you keep going. So I think maybe it's not always the numbered and nature of a listical that's important.

Like in many cases, I think the numbers don't matter. Maybe what's important is that we know to expect a listical to have headers. Actually, header is very important because they help you quickly identify the meat of the content to know what the things on the list are. You don't really have to read the paragraphs if there are any. You can just like look at the headers and say, do I want to go deeper on this one? Knowing

just scroll past right and you know exactly. You know pretty much how long the article is going to be. It's like ten items, that's it. Maybe there'll be some honorable mentions at the bottom, but for the most part, I have a general length in mind. Yeah, And so your relationship with the listical type thing is usually pretty mercenary, right, It's less dedicated than a relationship you might have with

other types of written texts. I think it's also appealing because a list promises discrete chunks of information that are desired for some understood reason, like they're either practically useful useful like steps and how to or um practically useful because, like say ranked products, you know that these are good versions of this product that you might want to remember and look for when you're shopping, or because they're interesting

and you want to have bits of interesting information to remember, like the the eleven craziest Baffamet statues, or there's something else that you feel compelled to know, like those best of lists that people sort of used to help form their taste. I was reading an article in The New Yorker by Maria Knakova, science writer who I like is she She wrote a good book called The Confidence Game. I enjoyed that one a lot. One of the things you mentioned is the idea of that the lists basically

benefit from processing fluency. And we've talked about processing fluency on the show before, but processing fluency is a really underrated influence on our mental lives. Like we spend a lot of energy trying to spend less mental energy on things like a lot of energy trying to optimize our information environments for processing fluency, which means we're trying to make sure the information coming into our brain is not

too challenging and it's easy to process. And there are a ton of ways you can look at the world around you and understand that we're trying to shape our environments to favor processing fluency by having these biases for processing fluency fluency, like remember the example of the the illusory truth effect. Oh yes, absolutely, Yeah, we're more likely to what recall something if we've heard it before, and even more if it's not true, even if it's an

outright lie. Exactly, I've heard it before, and therefore we we echo it. Yeah, we're so we're primed to understand it. It's easier to process because we've heard it before. And so there's scientific backing for the idea for the notion that if you hear something often enough, you start to believe it's true. And one possible explanation for this is

that it's caused by a bias favoring processing fluency. You hear something for the hundredth time, it's just way easier to process than when you hear something for the first time and it's new and unfamiliar. Another example I randomly came across as a study uh by a Grifhenator at All, which is a great name in social psychological and personality science.

In two thousand ten, there was a series of studies that just revealed, um, when people are grading handwritten essays, there's a strong bias in favor of the ones that are easy to read and against the ones that are that are more difficult to read. That might not be that surprising, but even people who don't think they're biased, in fact are You're biased by the fact that something that is easier to read and it's easier to take

in just feels better to you. And so I think this is clearly work with like list type content because you, uh, number one, lists are pre categorized, you know, like so you don't have to wonder, like what what box am I going to put this in? In my mind? Like you already you know based on the title of the list what you're going to be getting out of it. You're not going to be categorically surprised. You've you've already got a schemata going in for where to put everything.

And then also there's just simple stuff like kna Covid points out that lists naturally naturally lend themselves to spatial categorization, like there's vertical placement on a page, and there's ters to denote placement of information um there in like large blocks of normal text aren't as clearly spatialized, but that we remember things better when it's spatially formatted in a way that's clear. Like think about the memory palace. Uh. You know, people can remember things better if what they

like imagine a physical space. Yeah, using these yes, spatial um of processing to understand something that may just be a list of numbers even Yeah, like a top ten list is basically taking a concept and putting it in the format of a Mortal Kombat challenge tower, you know, where you have a list of opponents and at the top you've got you know, you've got Shaalcan or whoever, and that's the main boss, that's the number one ranking goes all the way down to the who are the

easiest person to beat? Is So if you can take anything be it you know, global politics or environmental concerns, break it down into a Mortal Kombat challenge tower, and then just about anybody can can at least get like the surface level unders standing of what you're trying to relate. That's a good point. I mean another way of putting it is that like, uh, lists tell you the tell they explicitly tell you what's the important part of what

you're reading. You know, like this is a thing that's like difficult for younger readers often is like to like read a passage and then identify what's the thesis sentence or the most important sentence in this paragraph or in this page. And like a lot of times it's it's harder for younger readers to do that. To figure out what's the point a list, you don't have to wonder. It tells you here's the point. And that's another big thing about about lists and ranking is we're often going

to skip to the end. Like Pitch for It comes out with like top one albums of the year, I'm going to look at the top ten. Maybe they intentionally stagger the page nation to make that harder to do. Yeah, yeah, you have to. Like, of course, you have to click through a bunch of pages rights part of the game. You like can't click to the last page from the first page. You can only click to the like third to last page from the first page age, and then

you have to click down from there. It's nonsense. People people get mad about that. But anyway, bringing back to umberto echo, like, I think there are some some clear easy reasons to see why, Like, you know, listical type content on the internet is highly popular, But what about the appeal of the list to somebody like Umberto Echo

and or in in something like the Iliad. One of the things that Echo mentions is he just says that lists are sort of a suggestion of immortality, because he says, you know, we have this discouraging limit on our lives. We know we're going to die, and that we like to assume that things go on without end, and so a list of creating these big lists, like the catalog of Ships, it's kind of a way of escaping thoughts about death because we like to make He says, we

make lists because we don't want to die. Interesting. Yeah, I mean it comes back, you know, probably one of the most direct things. We can think of it as a bucket list or a reading list of viewing list. Uh, these are all the things we're going to a common plush in our lifetime. Yeah, which, of course I have to sadly admit that I still have a couple of Umberto Eco novels on my two to read list, a couple that I haven't haven't gotten around to just yet.

Well I've only read one now. Oh yeah, they're uh. He has some other great ones of Co's Pendulum, Island of the day before Bartolino. Those are the those are the ones I enjoyed the most. I've got to check that out. Name of the Rose was awesome. It's oh yeah, it's like a easily now a top ten book for me,

I think, really really awesome. And by the way, speaking of the name of the route, Name of the Rose, of course, it's said in the medieval period with like monks who are you know, a lot of times dealing with these philosophical debates about the nature of things and dealing with these in cycling medieval encyclopedias, which is just like the best things that were, you know, the bestiaries

and all that um. And that one of the things Echo talks about in this interview is sort of the difference between understanding something by defining it versus understanding something by way of list uh, and that these are different

ways of approaching knowledge and of seeing the world. When you define something, you try to like put into a sentence the essence of what the concept or the thing is, whereas the other way, I guess is the more like inductive way of understanding a concept, which is making lists of examples of it or making lists of its characteristics.

You know, This reminds me of the TV Tropes website that I enjoy using from time to time, especially especially if we have an episode coming out and there's like a concept in the show and I would like to acknowledge or remind myself of either know either sci fi that I've I've read before or I'm familiar with, or something I am not familiar with it someow ties into

the concept. You can go to TV tropes and you can look at the various tropes and a given property, um so, and on one level, it's it's it's fulfilling, But on the other hand, it feels very very much like a reduction of these things, you know, like let's just Adam is a film or a novel or a

comic book down to familiar tropes that have appeared elsewhere. Well, on the other hand, I would say they kind of TV tropes that site kind of um I don't know, validates or immortalizes strange cliches and conventions by showing you just how many examples of it there are. When you thought you you see something in like one movie and you're like, that's kind of odd, But it feels bigger than that to me. It feels like a cliche. And sometimes you look it up on TV tropes and you

find out, oh, yeah, this is in thirty things. You know, it's in a bunch of anime, and you have it. But sometimes that thing that has appeared thirty Other times it's it's so well executed, or it's executed in a way that feels unique, or or or when other elements are creative sufficiently creative that it it doesn't feel like one of thirty things, it feels like the thing. Well. I think one of the great talents of a writer,

especially comedy writers more than anybody else. But but one of the great talents of a writer who has a good sense of irony is the talent for picking out one example of a thing that communicates that thing well, whereas somebody else would have to write a complex definition

or give a list of many examples. You know what I'm talking about, Like the great talent for picking out the one example that perfectly encapsulates the spirit of something like if you were to say, and I'm not even sure exactly what this would mean, but if you were to say so, and so is the Highlander two of people exactly Yes, I'm not sure what I would. I'm saying if I were to pass that judgment on someone, part of it would depend on obvious aspects of that individual.

But it that I'm still saying something that seems pretty specific. I don't know if it works for H two, but it's but but yes, you're on the right track, that is what I mean. Now, another way of thinking about lists is just the nature of list making and list using, as it's comparable to just how we use language, especially written language. UM So, if we go back far enough in time, we get back to the roots of cuneiform writing,

which developed around the eighth millennium BC. So this featured a system of clay tokens to represent individual units of various commodities. So like one uh, you know, sheep, One sheep would be one sheep token because it was that simple and uh, these were pretty useful for keeping track of of of these commodities as we're dealing now with, uh, you know, with with cultures that that had a surplus

of things in there there was trade going on. Um. These tokens remained in useful around umt BC, when more complex tokens came into play, and you would have clay envelopes which were eventually developed to hold these tokens, and then you would stamp those envelopes to indicate the contents, and this stamping would eventually lead to solid clay tablet writing and pictograph writing, logo grams or word signs, and in sequential writing systems. But written language in this emerges

from counting technology, from the systems of making lists. Yeah, I've read this theory before, I uh, and this is really interesting. The idea that like the first written language emerged from trade and originally was more pictographic, but but became more symbolic as time goes on, and this led to phonetic alphabets. Right now, a great deal of what

we do with written language is highly sequential. Even in the case of say, nonlinear narratives and fiction, there is still is an order to what you're being presented with, even if that order is is altered, you know, it's it's maybe not chronological anymore, but there is still an order, Like there is a sequence that you're presented with, and that sequence presumably means something, whether you're presenting something in in reverse chronological order or you're skipping around in time,

et cetera. And of course we also ultimately experience, remember, and anticipate the universe as a series of sequential events. So this is one of those areas where it begins to sort of you know, hurt the brain a little bit, but like you know what comes first, right, Like to what extent is the Is this sequential experience the linear existence of of life? Is it dictated by our language writing, list making nature or is it the other way around? Well,

that is a great question. I mean, the physics of time is no different for other animals, right, I mean their experience of time might be different than ours, but like it's not the case that like, uh, chimpanzees live their lives out of order, they also experience an order of events. They might not perceive it like we do. But yeah, I do wonder about that. With language, are we like, are we homo album us or whatever? The

list the list making ape? Is that what we are? Well, I'll tell you this, Uh, list making apes have have achieved an awful lot when it comes to making lists. And one of the one of the hallmarks of this that I think we we both found kind of independently in our our searching, is that there is an actual Wikipedia article out there that is a list of lists of lists. It is so good. The intro to this

page reads as follows. This is a list of articles that are lists of list articles on the English Wikipedia. In other words, each of the articles linked here is an index up to multiple lists on a topic. Some of the linked articles are themselves lists of lists of lists.

This article is also a list of lists. You know, it's not surprising that Wikipedia is where you would encounter a list of lists of lists, because Wikipedia is an example of encyclopedic thinking, which is an attempt, however feeble on our part, to impose order and understanding on a world, on a world where you know, things do exist in relation to each other, but order is sort of it's it's our attempt to master the chaos of reality to say, like, okay,

here's how we can put things into categories. It's also sort of the project of Aristotle, right, I mean Aristotle like to divide things and put them in categories and make lists of lists of things. You could say that list making is in one way sort of deep at the core of the scholastic impulse. It's, you know, when you're thinking about what it means to be a scholar

to study the world. It's to like put things in boxes where they conceptually go and organize the boxes, or to wander out in the into the garden and name all the animals. Right. Yeah, Well another funny thing mentioning the garden is um the authors of that book I was talking about earlier. They point out that Genesis one is essentially a list. On the first day, it is

a to do list. It's just like, seriously, it is a divine to do list, and then it gives way to like listing animals and stuff and says that the first task give to man when he was created is to name all the animals, which is to create a list make more lists. Now I have somebody to make lists with me. That was the major accomplishment there. Well, that is until that somebody broke the only commandment on the list of thou shalt not so yes. Yeah, but

oh goodness. Getting into rules and laws though, that's a whole. That's a whole another area of list making that we didn't really get into here, just the the the essential nature of of law, like and really that's that's part of the same process going on. Like it's one thing to say you there subject, uh do right, or you know, behave yourself. That's this one thing. But if you say, actually, here's a here are the ten steps to not be

executed by my high guard. Here are ten steps to not be cast outside the city gates and consumed by the jackals and h and then you're like, okay, I can probably do these things. Well, it's a way of making like virtue or righteousness. You can divide it in the same way Echo does us with He's like, okay, you can give a definition of something, or you can give a list of examples of it. You can do

the same thing with like righteousness or the law. You could say you give somebody a principle like do unto others as they would do unto you or something, or you can give them just a long list of rules like don't do this, don't do that, do this. Both our approaches humans have used, and I guess they both have their advantages, right, because like the the more like single principle based system feels more flexible and takes into account more of the you know, the diversity of human

life and the different things you'll experience. Is less legalistic and intolerant, and on the other hand, the list of rules is less ambiguous. You're like, like, if you just follow a gigantic list of rules, you're less likely to accidentally get into trouble, right, Like, you're more likely to give a list of commandments to say a robot or two, or to robocopp er whoever, as opposed to a principle, or at least you give them rules alongside the principle.

All right, So there you have it, the world of lists. I would say, bekase, Sorry, we just ended up like trying to list all the different ways that you can use a list or think about a list. I think that's what this turned into. This episode, by the way, one of the top ten episodes we put out this month. I would, I would say, just to pat ourselves on the back. Um, obviously, this is gonna be a topic that a lot of people have thoughts about out there.

You're gonna have varying degrees of success with with to do lists, You're gonna have varying thoughts on top ten lists, et cetera. Just sort of the list obsessed nature of our culture, and we would love to hear from you about it. What are your top thirty seven reactions to this episode. Yes, lists them, rank them, share them with us. In the meantime, if you want to check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership.

That's where you'll find all the podcast episodes. You'll find blog posts. You'll find some lists on there from back when we were doing more text based content. You also find links out to our various social media accounts. If you want to support the show, there are a few different things you can do. UH. You can buy some merchandise. We have a t public store with some cool logos and designs. But the best thing you can do is, first of all, spread the word. Let other people know

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other podcast, It's about inventions. If you like this one, we're pretty sure you'll like that one too, go subscribe. But anyway, big thanks to our excellent audio producers, Alex Williams and try Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us directly with feedback about this episode or any other, with suggestions for the future, or just to say hello, let us know how you found out about show where you listen from. What your top ten list of lists of lists are? Uh? List, I think

I'd screwed up the plural there. Anyway, you can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com