The two-list method for choosing which jobs to apply to

The two-list method is a simple triage: split every role you’re considering into “would take tomorrow” and “would take after asking some questions,” and refuse to apply to anything outside those two lists. It’s a job-search adaptation of the prioritisation idea popularised in James Clear’s write-up of Warren Buffett’s “2-list” exercise — the anecdote about Buffett’s pilot Mike Flint is widely repeated and may well be apocryphal (no primary source has ever surfaced for it), but the underlying logic — that the merely-good things crowd out the genuinely-great ones — holds up regardless of whether the conversation actually happened.

The job-search version is below. Use it when your shortlist has more than ten roles on it and you can feel yourself getting careless.

How to run the method (five minutes)

1. List one. Write down every currently posted role you’d accept tomorrow if offered, on the terms you can guess at from the JD. Target: three to seven roles. More than ten means you are being too generous with yourself.
2. List two. Write down the roles you’d take after asking one or two questions — comp band, remote policy, manager’s reputation, scope. Target: six to twelve.
3. The avoid list. Everything else. The roles you’d take “if nothing better came along.” Cities you aren’t sure about. Companies you don’t really respect. Don’t apply. That is the entire point of the method. The energy you save here is what makes the two real lists possible.

List one: roles you’d take tomorrow

For each entry on list one, spend forty-five minutes. Read the JD twice — our guide to reading the JD like a recruiter covers what to actually look for. Find the hiring manager on LinkedIn. Look at recent company news. Write a cover letter that mentions at least one specific thing — not “your impressive growth” but “the move to monthly cohorts you announced in January.” If you’ve never written one of these before, the four-sentence cover letter is the shortest workable template.

List two: roles you’d take after asking some questions

These are the roles where you can’t tell from the JD alone whether you want them. For these, write a shorter application — twenty minutes each. Your job here is to get to a first conversation, where you can ask the questions that turn it into a List One or off the list entirely. The five questions worth bringing to that conversation are covered in interview questions to ask the employer.

What’s not on either list

Everything else. Jobs you’d take “if nothing better came along.” Jobs in cities you’re not sure about. Jobs at companies you don’t really respect. Don’t apply. They take time you should be spending on the two lists, and you won’t take them anyway. If you are still in the upstream question of whether to leave at all, the stay-or-leave framework is the right place to be before you open the editor.

Why this works

A separate piece on how many job applications are actually needed covers the volume question directly.

Quality and care are forms of self-respect that get noticed at the other end. The two-list method is what care looks like, mechanically.