The Two-List Trick — Buffett's 25/5 Rule to Cut Your Goals
Warren Buffett's 25/5 rule: list 25 goals, circle 5, avoid the other 20. This week is about deciding like a pro. It starts with ruthless focus — cut your goals to the core, then move fast on the rest.
The idea
Warren Buffett's 25/5 rule is ruthless goal-cutting. You write down 25 goals you want to achieve. Then you circle your 5 most important ones — the ones that matter most in your career and life. The list of 20 that you didn't circle? Those are things you'll actively avoid. Not "maybe later" — actively refuse. Most people have 25 goals and chase all of them. Buffett says: pick 5, go all-in, say no to the rest. The magic is not in the 5 goals — it's in the 20 you're NOT doing. When you turn good goals into "not to do," you free up time, energy, and focus for the goals that actually matter.
Who is this for?
Rohan Verma
Software Engineer · Bangalore
Rohan had 22 goals: learn machine learning, start a side project, write a book, get fit, lead a team, travel, invest. He was doing all of them halfway.
He wrote the 25 list and circled 5: master machine learning, lead his team, build savings to ₹10L. The other 20? He said no.
In 6 months, he shipped an ML project his team loved and his savings hit ₹8.5L. The clarity of 5 instead of 22 let him actually finish things.
"I was half-doing 22 things. When I said no to 20 and focused on 5, everything accelerated. The power is in the refusal."
What you'll get
25 goals written down
Everything you want to achieve in the next 3 years — career, money, learning, relationships, health.
5 goals circled as your core focus
The 5 that matter most — the ones that will compound and change your trajectory.
20 goals named as "not to do"
Not abandoned — actively refused. When you say no to these, you protect your 5.
A focus clarity that lasts
For the next quarter, you know your 5. Everything else is a distraction. That clarity is worth more than 25 goals.
Watch
The Art of Improvement · productivity · ~6 min
Do the challenge
1Brain dump: write 25 goals you want in the next 3 years
Career goals, money goals, learning, health, relationships, hobbies, travel. Write freely — no filtering. Everything counts.
2Circle your 5 core goals — the ones that change your trajectory
Ask yourself: which 5 of these 25 would change my life the most? If I only achieved these 5, would I be proud? Circle those 5.
💡 I have 25 goals: [paste your 25 goals] Help me identify which 5 of these would have the biggest impact on my career and life in 3 years. Which 5 are the most foundational?
3Name the 20 you're refusing — make them explicit
For each of the 20 not-circled goals, write: "I am not [goal]" (e.g., "I am not learning graphic design this year"). Seeing the refusal makes it real.
4Block time for your 5 goals — weekly check-in
For each of your 5, allocate 1–2 hours per week. This week, spend 2 hours on at least one of your 5. The refusal is only real if you protect time for your 5.
Your template
BUFFETT'S 25/5 RULE — Your Goal Clarity Sheet TIMEFRAME: Next 3 years ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ STEP 1: BRAIN DUMP (write 25 goals — no filtering) Career goals: 1. ___________________ 2. ___________________ 3. ___________________ Money goals: 4. ___________________ 5. ___________________ 6. ___________________ Learning & skills: 7. ___________________ 8. ___________________ 9. ___________________ Health & fitness: 10. __________________ 11. __________________ 12. __________________ Relationships & influence: 13. __________________ 14. __________________ 15. __________________ Hobbies & adventure: 16. __________________ 17. __________________ 18. __________________ Personal growth: 19. __________________ 20. __________________ 21. __________________ 22. __________________ 23. __________________ 24. __________________ 25. __________________ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ STEP 2: CIRCLE YOUR TOP 5 (Which 5 would change your life the most?) ⭐ Goal 1: __________________ ⭐ Goal 2: __________________ ⭐ Goal 3: __________________ ⭐ Goal 4: __________________ ⭐ Goal 5: __________________ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ STEP 3: NAME THE 20 YOU'RE REFUSING (For each, write "I am not [goal]") ❌ I am not ____________________ ❌ I am not ____________________ ❌ I am not ____________________ ... (all 20) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ YOUR WEEKLY FOCUS (protect 2 hours per goal) Week of __________: [ ] Goal 1: 2 hours spent on ___________ [ ] Goal 2: 2 hours spent on ___________ [ ] Goal 3: 2 hours spent on ___________ [ ] Goal 4: 2 hours spent on ___________ [ ] Goal 5: 2 hours spent on ___________ Goals that got time: _____/5 ✓
Knowledge Check
5 quick questions to make sure the main ideas landed.
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Tomorrow
The Reversible-Door Test — Decide Fast on Cheap Bets
Bezos's one-way vs two-way doors: some decisions are irreversible (one-way) so decide slow. Others can be undone (two-way) so decide fast. The skill is classifying your decisions to set the right speed.
