why i limited notes to three

Introduction : Why I Chose 3

There are a lot of reasons why I decided to cap the number of notes at three, and not four, or five, or “however many sticky notes you feel like today.”

Three isn’t arbitrary.

It’s not even just about my name (San San = three three) or my faith (three-in-one God).

It’s because the human brain, despite all its miraculous folds and neural fireworks, is actually a lot more limited than we’d like to believe.

And the research? It agrees with me!

1. Science Says: Three Is Pretty Much the Ceiling

Let’s start with one of my favourite pieces of evidence: the Tarnow Unchunkable Test.

Now, that name sounds like something you’d order at a German bakery—“yes, I’ll have one pretzel, two strudels, and one unchunkable, please”—but it’s actually a cognitive psychology experiment.

In Tarnow’s study, participants were given lists of items that couldn’t be grouped or “chunked” into meaningful patterns.

No shortcuts, no clever mnemonics, just raw data.

The result? When the lists had three items, people remembered an average of 2.54 items. Not bad.

But when the lists jumped to four items, recall dropped to 2.38. Instead of remembering more, people actually started forgetting.

In other words: without shortcuts, the human brain taps out at around three. Push it further, and the system starts glitching.

That’s not just quirky lab trivia—it mirrors daily life. Add a fourth spinning plate, and suddenly one of the others crashes. You think you can handle four projects, four tabs, four conversations at once—but then you forget the milk, lose the thread of your email, and end up standing in the kitchen wondering why the fridge is open.

Tarnow’s study just proves what we already feel: past three, things slip.

The Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Psychology backs this up: working memory is very limited. Attention is a finite resource. You can’t hack your way out of biology. Once you overload the system, performance drops.

This is why juggling ten priorities doesn’t make you ten times more effective. It makes you forget your own passwords.

It’s not just academic nitpicking—it’s a consensus. From Cambridge lectures to neuroscience reviews, researchers agree: our focus is a bottleneck. Doesn’t matter how fast your Wi-Fi is—your brain still hits traffic after three.

2. Chunking Exists, But It’s Basically Cheating

Yes, there’s one loophole: chunking. That’s when you group several pieces of information into one mental package. It’s why you can remember a phone number as “0412-345-678” instead of nine random digits. The brain treats each group as a single “chunk,” so you can technically hold more.

Modern theories of working memory—like Cowan’s model, or newer neural hierarchy models—suggest the limit is three or four chunks, not raw items. Clever chunking can stretch your capacity. But here’s the catch: chunking isn’t automatic. It requires structure, effort, and sometimes delusion.

Because telling yourself you only have “three goals” when they’re “finish the project, run a marathon, and move house” isn’t really three.

It’s thirty wearing trench coats. And unless you’re a memory athlete or a magician with Post-It notes, chunking is unreliable.

That’s why I stick with raw three. No cheats, no smoke and mirrors. Just the honest limit that saves me from overloading my own head.

3. Clutter Paralyses, but Three Sets You Free

Beyond research, there’s the lived reality of clutter. Not just the clutter on your desk (though yes, I hate that too), but cognitive clutter.

When I have more than three lists, my brain doesn’t get sharper—it freezes.

It’s like staring at the infinite Netflix menu: the more options, the harder it is to choose. Too many lists, too many micro-tasks, and instead of starting,

I SPIRAL.

So limiting to three isn’t just a cute constraint.

It’s a survival mechanism.

It’s Marie Kondo applied to cognitive load: cut the excess, keep the essentials. Anything beyond three sparks chaos, not joy.

That’s why my apps strip down to three core functions instead of bloated feature sets. That’s why my day is planned around three priorities, not thirty. That’s why I juggle projects one-at-a-time, not all-at-once.

And here’s the irony: limits are freeing. When I cap myself at three, I don’t waste energy on indecision. I don’t drown in shiny distractions. I just do the three things. And three things done is always better than thirty things started.

Think of it like a buffet. Unlimited food sounds amazing—until you’re holding three plates, balancing noodles on top of roast beef, and crying into your soup. But three carefully chosen dishes? You savour them, finish them, and leave satisfied instead of bloated.

That’s what limiting minimally notes to 3 is about. It’s not restriction—it’s freedom from overwhelm.

Conclusion: Why I Choose 3

So why cap minimally notes at three notes?

Because the brain science backs it. Because attention is finite and chunking only gets you so far. Because clutter is paralysing. Because less really is more.

Three works. Three is enough. Three gets things done.

If you try to go beyond three, things slip, errors creep in, and overwhelm wins.

But when you stick to three, you focus. You finish. You breathe.

That’s why I choose three. Not four, not five, not infinite. Just three. Always three.