Out of my whole to-do list, what's worth doing today?

Habit 1: Sort everything into projects and areas

A project ends. "Plan the trip to Lisbon" is a project, and one day it's done. An area is an ongoing part of your life (health, home, money, your job) and it never ends.

Give each project and each area its own list. A loose task that belongs to neither goes on 1 general list, called To-dos.

This is what makes planning fast. You choose among a handful of projects and areas. You don't choose among 1,000 tasks.

Habit 2: Keep the next action on top of every list

It's tempting to put a date on a task just so you don't lose it. Order does that job better.

Keep each list in priority order. The task on top is the next action: the 1 thing you'd do next to move that project or area along. Every list always has one.

What about a task that never reaches the top? If it matters, move it up. If it stays low week after week, it wasn't as important as it felt when you wrote it down. It costs you nothing while it waits, because nothing marks it late.

Habit 3: Plan, then do

Choosing what to do and doing it pull your attention in opposite directions. To choose, you look at everything (every project, the week ahead, the real deadlines) and weigh it. To do, you look at 1 thing and ignore the rest.

Try both at once and you go in circles. You sit down to write the report and glance at your list to see what's after it. You see the dentist, the invoice and the thing you promised Sam. Now you're wondering whether the report is even the right thing to be working on. 20 minutes later you've reordered the list and written nothing.

So plan at set times, and do the rest of the time.

Once a week, build your short list (about 15 minutes):

1. Pick 1 project or area to be your main focus for the week. Pick 1-2 smaller ones to move along beside it.
2. Check that each one has a clear next action, and the 2-3 tasks after it. That's all the planning a project needs.
3. Scan your deadlines and decide what you're committing to this week.
4. Scan through your other lists once, so nothing sits unseen.

What you picked is your short list for the week: your focus, the 1-2 beside it, and the deadlines you committed to.

Each morning, pull from your short list (about 2 minutes):

1. Look at your short list and pull the tasks you mean to do today onto today's list.
2. Mark up to 3 of them as goals. These are the ones that make it a good day even if nothing else gets done. 3 is the limit.
3. Stop planning.

For the rest of the day, your only decision is which line to cross out next.

Habit 4: Start every day fresh

Today's list holds only what you put on it. Each morning it's blank, apart from anything you planned for this day ahead of time.

What you didn't finish yesterday doesn't come with you. It stays in the list it came from. Pull it again if you still mean it. Often you won't, because what matters on Wednesday isn't what mattered on Tuesday.

A list that carries yesterday forward never starts fresh. A list that never starts fresh never asks you the question.

Habit 5: Set a deadline only when missing it costs you something

A real deadline has a consequence: a tax filing, a flight, a draft you promised a client. Often someone else set the date. Sometimes you did. Either way, here's the test. If the date passes and nothing happens, it wasn't a deadline.

Fake deadlines bury the real ones. When every task has a date, the tax filing looks the same as the errand you dated so you wouldn't forget it, and you stop believing any of them.

Most tasks don't have a real deadline, so most tasks don't get one. When you have only a few, you can read all of them in one scan, and you believe every one.

Planning to do something on Thursday is a plan. If Thursday ends and the task isn't done, the plan lapses and nothing else changes. A deadline isn't like that, so the two are never the same thing.