This article originally appeared in MindBodyGreen.

How do you keep track of your to-do’s? Do you have a calendar, a collage of sticky notes, or do you simply scrawl down a list? 

No matter your planning preferences (be it on a digital notes app or with a pen and paper), neurologists Dean Sherzai, M.D., and Ayesha Sherzai, M.D., say it’s worth keeping track of your daily tasks. Apparently, they explain on the mindbodygreen podcast, checklists earn an A+ for brain health. 

Technically, it’s not the actual list-making that’s so stellar for brain health—it’s isolating your tasks, from beginning to end, and physically (or mentally) checking them off. You see, the Sherzai’s are not huge fans of multitasking: “We say there's no such thing as multitasking; it's doing multiple things badly," says Dean. Attention and cognitive decline are deeply intertwined (your attention naturally depletes as you age), and when you multitask, your attention becomes further compromised, which creates a perfect storm for cognitive decline.

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