The Simplest And Easiest To-Do List You Will Ever Find.

have you noticed that your task manager is great at collecting stuff to do but if you want it to show you a focused view of the things that you must do today it's completely hopeless now that's not necessarily the fault of your task manager that's more likely your fault for being a little bit too optimistic about what you can get done today however it can also be very distracting seeing all those Tas scrolling down your screen screaming at you asking you do me do me do me when really that's prob

ably not the most productive way or certainly not the most focused way that you could attack your day well in my quest to find a simpler more focused way of attacking the day I think I might have come up with something rather special that actually takes advantage of your digital task manager's ability to collect things and the pen and paper's ability to get your brain to focus and today I'm going to show you how to set this very very simple to-do list system up now I must confess what I'm going

to show you is nothing revolutionary or new thousands of people millions of people are using this system every single day and I know that if you go through all the productivity blogs and books and everything this system actually was made famous by a gentleman called Ivy Lee in 1918 so that's L 26 years 126 years ago today but the premise Still Remains this is a fantastic simple system that anyone can use and even if you're not using all the digital technology available for you today it's actuall

y probably the cheapest to do list you will ever come across so let me show you what it is now before I reveal this to you I must say in my show notes it actually just says the reveal makes it sound like something's really exciting that's coming along well maybe it's not that exciting but it will transform your time management and productivity what am I talking about I'm talking about a humble pen and papered to-do list and this is my list of things to do today now when you look at that do you f

eel overwhelmed do you feel stressed out is it going to be difficult to pick which task to do probably not but let me show you how this works the first thing to do is when you're doing your daily planning now this is the five or 10 minutes that you spend at the end of the day or if you're an early bird first thing in the morning taking down the tasks that you must do today or would at the very least push yourself to get done today and take them from here this is where your digital task list is b

ecause remember digit task managers are phenomenal at collecting stuff just looking through your list of all the tasks that you have and then transferring the number well in my case here I'm going with eight I found that eight is the best number now I do admit that I have a 2+8 t productivity system or prioritization system that you can use and if you if these test are not too big then you can do the 10 tasks that must be done today I find eight is a better number it's more realistic and it's on

e that I'm also going to get done most days what you basically do is you take the 10 tasks or eight tasks from there the eight most important tasks that you must do today and you transfer them onto a single sheet of paper with today's date at the top now there is something else that I would suggest that you do one of the things that I suggest that you do is that you draw a line under the two most prioritized tasks so you would draw a line over in my case here record your you record YouTube video

s and edit this week's blog post which as you can see has already been done after that you can then list out the six or eight other tasks that you would like to get done that day now remember what's happening here is you are collecting all that stuff using your computer or your phone and then just giving yourself 10 minutes either at the end of the day or first thing in morning to actually transfer the most important tasks the tasks that you really want to get focused on tomorrow or today onto a

piece of paper now once you've got it on your piece of paper then you can actually use that piece of paper and have it all written down in front of you it's a wonderful simple system now I must confess there is something rather better or certainly nicer about running a line with a pen and by the way today I'm just using my mom blong I think it's a44 it's a smaller mom blong fountain pen that's the pen just for those of you who have been following along with my pen and paper productivity systems

it's a m blong today but anyway going back to this there is something about taking your pen and running a line through something that you've done it adds a sense of completion now when I do this on my computer what I'm finding is that I'm typing away I'm finishing off a blog post or I'm finishing off writing some feedback or a proposal and then I just open up my todoist and then it's like click it doesn't feel like there is an end it doesn't feel like okay that task is completed but now what's

happening is I am typing away and bang bang bang bang bang finished that job's done okay picking up the pen and then just running a line through the task that I have just completed now what I'm seeing is I'm seeing a list that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller so there's that sense of the sense of achievement as you're going through the day a task manager doesn't give you that feel which means that you're just get feeling like oh it's another task done and then you start losing interest

and then you start looking for another task manager or another app to help you and it just becomes a vicious circle I can assure you that these things are a lot cheaper than a task manager or Notes app subscription pick up one of these for about $2 or $3 and they're going to run you well in this case it's I think it's 90 pages so that's going to run me for 6 months 180 days so I can turn the page over it's going to run for me about 6 months and it cost me $3 now you know my to-do subscription is

costing me3 or4 do a month and that's so it's essentially Tod doist is costing me twice as much as just being able to purchase a pad of paper and do the job so when you think about it this is a superb way of getting you focused on what really matters per day now last year sometime uh YouTuber Peter McKinnon one of my favorite YouTubers Peter McKennon he's a photographer and videographer he did a video on his paper based system which is using what's called a pocket notebook now I don't have any

pocket notebooks with me but essentially a pocket notebook is about half the size of this and you can carry around you can carry it around with you anywhere you go if theoretically you can carry it in your pocket now that's a great system if you're moving around all day now for me when I'm at work I'm not moving around so an A5 spiral bound notebook does the trick beautifully but for those of you who are moving around all day from meeting room to meeting room or perhaps you're traveling around o

n in a car or on bus or train then perhaps you'll find that a pocket notebook is more preferable doesn't really matter because this is just a simple list of no more than 10 things that you do each day now Peter McKinnon has a great theory on this what you can do is you can turn this into a competition with yourself because the goal now is that you actually do all 10 tasks that's a win once that's cross crossed off you turn over the page you start the next day you do the same what you're looking

for is a chain of success now I'm Peter McKinnon mentioned that he's managed to do it for 30 straight days which is quite impressive I'm not suspecting that you will be that successful at this I'm certainly not there are certain things that I cannot get done in a particular day but boy am I giving it everything I've got to get it done which is why it's a superb way of getting you focused on one of the important things that need to be done today okay something rather important to mention at this

point you need to establish some little rules now one of the rules is that you try and complete these all day at the very least you complete the top two tasks however there are other things that may be happening in the day that that you need to add hence the reason why there is space at the bottom if you quickly want to scribble something down into your little to-do list however I would say throw anything new into the digital system and process that in the normal way however if you do find in th

e morning that something that you've added has now become less of a priority of something that you weren't aware of then the rule is if you add something to this list you must delete Del something from the list it's no good just making this list longer and longer and longer and longer all day because you may as well just stay with the digital system this is about getting you focused it's about saying these are the eight or 10 tasks that I must complete today as I say if you decide at some point

in the day that one of these tasks either cannot be done or you need to switch it out for something else then that's what you do if you add something you must delete something and that's really all it is it's a very very simple system keep this notebook on your desk all day make sure it's in front of you so that you can see what needs to happen next and you are going to find yourself so much more focused and you're going to be getting a hell of a lot of stuff done now if you want to learn about

the next part of this whole kind of hybrid digital analog productivity system that I've been developing through this throughout this year so far then you can look at this video up here which will tell you all about my all important planning book