Episode 110

Building Systems That Protect Your Priorities with Marlon Buchanan

No matter how good your memory is, it was never designed to hold everything modern life asks you to remember. There are meetings to schedule, birthdays to plan for, bills to check, appointments to make, emails to answer, groceries to buy, children to pick up, and dozens of small tasks that seem to appear out of nowhere. Then, in the middle of all of that, you're somehow supposed to remember the things that matter most to you personally.

This is why I talk so much about getting things out of your head. We often assume that if we were just more organized, more disciplined, or better at remembering things, life wouldn't feel so overwhelming. But sometimes the real problem isn't a lack of effort at all. It's that we're asking our brains to hold far more information than they're designed to manage at one time.

I recently had a wonderful conversation about this with Marlon Buchanan on Your Priority Centered Life. Marlon is a technologist, bestselling author, and IT leader with a computer science degree from MIT and advanced degrees in business and software engineering. He's also the founder of Home Tech Hacker and the author of Life by Design, a book about using automation and systems to reclaim time, reduce stress, and make more room for what actually matters.

What I appreciated most about our conversation was that this was not really a discussion about adding more technology to our lives. In fact, one of Marlon's most useful daily systems involves a plain legal pad. The larger lesson is that technology, paper, reminders, routines, and automation are simply tools. What matters is whether the system helps take unnecessary mental work off your plate so you can use your limited time and energy more intentionally.

Why Working Harder Eventually Stops Working

Marlon's interest in automation grew out of a very personal wake-up call. When his father was 49, he had a massive heart attack and nearly died. When Marlon himself reached 49, he began thinking about his father's experience and taking a closer look at his own health, fitness, and the way he was living.

By then, Marlon had built a full life. He was married, raising children, running a business, writing, and managing a demanding professional career. Like so many high-achieving adults, he had plenty of things he wanted to do and an even longer list of things he was obligated to do. He realized that simply trying to work harder was no longer going to solve the problem.

His health was one of the clearest examples. He couldn't simply decide to exercise more and assume motivation would carry him through every day. He needed his clothes ready, workouts scheduled, and some structure around meals so that healthy choices didn't require a brand-new round of decisions every time. The goal wasn't to become rigid about every calorie or every minute. It was to create enough structure that taking care of himself required less mental effort.

I think this distinction matters because many busy people keep trying to solve structural problems with additional effort. We tell ourselves that tomorrow we'll remember, tomorrow we'll be more disciplined, or tomorrow we'll finally stay on top of everything. When the same problem keeps showing up, though, it may be time to stop asking how you can try harder and start asking what kind of system could make the desired action easier.

What Should You Automate?

Not every part of life needs a system, and certainly not every part of life needs an app. Marlon looks first for tasks that happen regularly, don't require a great deal of personal judgment, or simply don't matter enough to deserve a large amount of mental energy. These are often excellent candidates for automation because getting them off your plate frees attention for things that actually require your thought and care.

For example, maybe you don't particularly care how certain household basics get reordered. You simply don't want to discover at 9:00 at night that you've run out of something everyone uses. Maybe you don't want to remember which week recycling goes out, when a filter needs to be changed, or when a recurring payment is due. These aren't necessarily difficult tasks, but every one of them occupies a tiny bit of memory until it gets done.

At the same time, you want to be thoughtful about what you automate. There are areas of your life where efficiency shouldn't be the primary goal. Relationships are a good example. A calendar reminder that tells you your partner's birthday is coming up can help you be more thoughtful, but an AI tool automatically sending affectionate messages that don't even sound like you is probably not strengthening the relationship.

One of the best ways to think about this is to automate the logistics without automating the meaning. Let the system remind you that something important is coming. Let it order a routine household item or put a task on your calendar. Then keep the personal judgment, creativity, and connection for yourself.

Your Memory Is Not a Life Management System

One moment in my conversation with Marlon especially stayed with me. He said that he used to think he had a very good memory, but eventually realized that there is simply too much happening in modern life for anyone's memory to hold all of it reliably. Even someone who generally has a good memory is still dealing with constant interruptions, digital information, family logistics, professional demands, and countless small decisions throughout the day.

You've probably had the experience of thinking of something you need to do, being interrupted for thirty seconds, and then completely forgetting what you were thinking about. That doesn't necessarily mean your memory is bad. It means something else captured your working memory before you had a chance to secure the original thought.

For people who have ADHD or other executive function challenges, this can become even more frustrating because working memory, task initiation, prioritization, and attention may already require more effort. Add children, work messages, appointments, household responsibilities, and constant digital interruptions, and trying to keep everything mentally available can become exhausting very quickly.

This is why I encourage people to externalize information. A calendar, reminder, written list, checklist, visual cue, routine, or recurring task isn't evidence that you somehow failed to remember. It's a way of preserving your mental energy for things your brain is much better suited to do, such as problem-solving, connecting with people, creating, and making thoughtful decisions.

A Simple Birthday System That Protects Relationships

One of the simplest examples Marlon shared is his system for birthdays. Instead of expecting himself to remember both the birthday and everything that needs to happen before it, he puts important birthdays into his calendar and creates two reminders.

His first reminder happens about two weeks before the birthday so he has time to buy a gift or make whatever preparations are needed. A second reminder appears the day before so he remembers to call, send a message, wrap the gift, write a card, or finish any other last details.

I told Marlon that I would probably make that first reminder a month ahead because I like ordering handcrafted gifts from Etsy, and those aren't always the sort of thing you can order on Tuesday and expect to have by Friday. That's actually part of what makes systems useful: they don't need to look exactly the same for everyone. The right system is the one that matches the way you actually live.

Notice that this doesn't make the relationship less personal. The system simply handles the remembering so that when the birthday arrives, you have more capacity to be thoughtful. You're not replacing care with automation. You're using automation to make it easier to express that care.

More Notifications Usually Do Not Mean More Peace

It's impossible to talk about technology without acknowledging that it has also contributed to the very overwhelm we're trying to solve. Our phones, inboxes, social platforms, news apps, calendars, and work tools are all capable of interrupting us throughout the day. Many of them are intentionally designed to attract our attention because our attention is valuable.

Marlon told me that he keeps most notifications turned off during the week and generally only has them on during the weekend. Even then, he sometimes finds them annoying. What he noticed after spending time with notifications turned off was how dramatically different it felt when they came back on.

I often encourage clients to approach this as an experiment rather than making it feel like some enormous lifestyle change. Turn off notifications for two apps. Unsubscribe from six email newsletters you never actually read. Remove one source of interruption for a week and pay attention to how you feel.

I've rarely heard someone tell me that turning off unnecessary notifications created a crisis because they suddenly missed all sorts of essential information. What I hear far more often is that they can concentrate better and don't feel as pulled around by their devices. If reducing a few interruptions gives you more control over your attention, that's a pretty significant return for a very small change.

Use AI as a Personal Assistant, Not as Your Brain

Artificial intelligence adds another layer to this conversation because AI has tremendous potential to reduce busywork, but it also has tremendous potential to create more of it. Just as email was once supposed to simplify communication and eventually became a source of overload for many people, AI can either help us protect our attention or simply increase the volume of things we're expected to produce.

Marlon offered a way of thinking about AI that I really like: use it as a personal assistant rather than using it as a replacement for your judgment. For example, imagine you need to schedule a meeting with five people. Instead of manually scrolling through five calendars, an AI tool may be able to identify several times when everyone is available.

The same idea applies to email. Maybe you've been on vacation for two weeks and come back to hundreds of messages. Rather than immediately reading everything from top to bottom, an AI assistant may be able to summarize the backlog, pull out action items, and identify a handful of messages that deserve your attention first. You still make the decisions, but you don't have to spend your best mental energy sorting through information that a tool can organize for you.

Where AI becomes less useful is when we expect it to make decisions that require our values. It may be able to identify open spaces in your calendar, but it doesn't know whether your energy is already depleted or whether your child needs more of you this week. It may summarize your inbox, but it doesn't fully understand what matters most in your life. That's why the higher-level decisions still belong to you.

Marlon goes much deeper into this topic in his newer book, Your Life, Solved: 42 Practical Ways AI Can Help You Save Time, Reduce Stress, and Get More Done, which focuses specifically on practical ways to use AI without allowing it to take over the thinking that should remain yours.

Why a Legal Pad Can Still Beat an App

Perhaps my favorite detail from this entire conversation was learning that a technologist with a computer science degree from MIT still starts his day with a legal pad.

Every morning, before everyone else begins asking for his attention, Marlon spends about five minutes thinking through the main things he wants to accomplish that day and writing them down. He includes both work and personal responsibilities because, of course, they all have to fit into the same day. Picking up a child from basketball practice belongs on the list just as much as an important work task does.

This makes perfect sense to me. Writing by hand can slow us down enough to think more deliberately about what we're doing instead of immediately reacting to whatever appears on a screen. The point isn't that paper is always superior to digital tools. The point is that the simplest system may sometimes be the system that helps you think most clearly.

There can be a tendency, especially among productive high achievers, to assume that a better life management system needs to be sophisticated. Sometimes sophistication is exactly what makes the system harder to maintain. If writing five priorities on a piece of paper each morning helps you consistently follow through, you do not need to turn that practice into a twelve-step digital workflow.

Financial Systems Can Remove a Surprising Amount of Mental Load

When I asked Marlon for one automation someone who feels completely overwhelmed could try, he suggested looking at finances. Many people have money spread across multiple checking accounts, savings accounts, retirement accounts, investment accounts, credit cards, loans, and other financial institutions. Monitoring all of those accounts manually can create more work than people realize.

Marlon uses Monarch Money, a paid financial management app that brings information from multiple accounts into one place. Instead of logging into several financial institutions separately, he can review transactions and get a broader view of his finances through one system.

He also made an important point about how often you need to look at financial information. Unless monitoring your accounts every day genuinely brings you joy, there probably isn't a meaningful financial decision you need to make every single day. A good system helps you see important information at a useful interval rather than making you feel as though you should constantly be checking.

I'm someone who actually enjoys spending a few minutes looking at financial information, so my rhythm may look different from someone who finds it stressful. Again, that is the larger principle. Your system has to fit your own brain, preferences, priorities, and life rather than forcing you into someone else's version of organization.

Systems Can Support Family Life and Home Safety Too

Some of Marlon's household automations are wonderfully ordinary. His smart home can turn lights off when the alarm is set and the house is empty. His doors automatically lock at a certain time each night, and exterior lighting can turn on and off automatically based on the time of day.

None of these individual automations completely transform someone's life. What they do is remove several small things that somebody would otherwise have to notice, remember, and do. The cumulative effect is that fewer low-level responsibilities are floating around in the background of your mind.

You don't need a smart home to apply the same principle. A shared family calendar can reduce confusion about sports practices and appointments. A recurring grocery order can eliminate a handful of decisions every week. A repeating reminder can tell you when something around the house needs attention.

For people who get easily distracted while moving through routines, I also like RoutineFlow. It allows you to create a sequence and move through it step by step, which can be especially helpful during mornings when there are several competing demands and interruptions. The app isn't doing your routine for you; it simply keeps you from having to continually reconstruct the sequence in your head.

The Best System Should Make Your Life Feel Lighter

I think one of the most important things to remember is that a good system should actually reduce your mental load. If you spend more time maintaining the productivity system than the system saves you, something has gone sideways.

This is also why Marlon cautions against constantly adding new apps. It can be tempting to find a specialized tool for every little problem, but suddenly you have 17 platforms, 17 passwords, 17 notification settings, and another whole category of things to manage. Before adding something new, it makes sense to ask whether a tool you already use can handle the job.

Sometimes a system that worked beautifully two years ago also stops serving you. That's okay. Our jobs change, our children grow, family schedules shift, and our brains do not need exactly the same support in every season of life.

The measure of a good system isn't whether it's impressive. It's whether it allows you to spend less energy managing low-priority details and more energy engaging with the things that actually matter.

What Does a Well-Designed Life Really Look Like?

Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Marlon what a well-designed life looks like to him. His answer wasn't about squeezing more productivity out of every hour. It was about spending more of your time doing things that bring joy, meaning, and a sense of accomplishment, and reaching the end of your day feeling good about how you spent it.

That, to me, is the real point of systems.

Automation shouldn't exist so that you can cram another nine tasks into your day. AI shouldn't exist so other people can expect twice as much output from you. A productivity tool shouldn't create another place where you feel behind.

A good system protects something.

It may protect your attention so you're not being interrupted every four minutes. It may protect your relationship by reminding you early enough to be thoughtful about an important date. It may protect your health by making it easier to prepare for exercise rather than having to summon motivation from scratch. It may protect your time by removing repetitive work that doesn't require your particular attention.

Most importantly, those systems should help you have enough of yourself left for your actual priorities.

You don't need to redesign your whole life this weekend. Pick one recurring thing that annoys you, one responsibility you continually forget, or one low-value task that consumes more attention than it deserves. Then ask yourself whether a reminder, recurring calendar event, checklist, automation, subscription, shared system, or even a sheet of paper could carry some of that weight for you.

Because the goal isn't to become better at remembering everything.

The goal is to stop needing to.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Marlon is the founder of Home Tech Hacker, where he shares practical information about using technology more intentionally at home and in everyday life. You can explore his work at Home Tech Hacker and learn more about his books and other projects at Marlon Buchanan's website.

His book Life by Design: Automate to Master Time, Health, Money and Unlock Personal Success explores many of the systems and automation ideas we discussed in this episode. You can learn more about the book on Marlon's Life by Design page.

Marlon's newest book, Your Life, Solved: 42 Practical Ways AI Can Help You Save Time, Reduce Stress, and Get More Done, goes deeper into using artificial intelligence as a practical tool for everyday life. You can find more information about Your Life, Solved here.

Marlon also mentioned Monarch Money, the paid personal finance platform he uses to bring multiple financial accounts and transactions into one place. You can learn more at Monarch Money.

During our conversation, I also mentioned RoutineFlow, an app designed to guide users through routines one step at a time. You can explore it at RoutineFlow.

Take the Next Step Toward a More Priority-Centered Life

If this conversation has you thinking about all the things currently competing for your time and attention, the next step isn't necessarily finding another app. It may be figuring out what deserves protection in the first place. The free Prior 10 Assessment can help you take a clearer look at your priorities and how well your current use of time and energy aligns with them. You can take the assessment at Prior10.com and sign up for the weekly Sunday Reset Newsletter.

And if you enjoyed this conversation with Marlon, you can find more episodes of Your Priority Centered Life at dr-alise.com/podcast.

The information contained and documents referenced in the podcast “Your Priority Centered Life” are for entertainment, educational and informational purposes only, and are not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, professional medical or health treatment, diagnosis, or advice. We strongly encourage listeners to consult with medical providers or qualified mental health providers with issues and questions regarding any physical and/or mental health symptoms or concerns that they may have. Furthermore, the opinions and views expressed by podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates are not necessarily those of the podcast host. Dr. Alise Murray’s opinions and views are expressed in her individual capacity and are not to be construed as those of any of her podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates.