Showerthought: Why I stopped cramming 50 tasks into my daily log

For two years I would pack my daily log with every single thing I could think of, from laundry to big projects. It made me feel productive but I rarely finished half of them. Last month I saw a post from a bullet journaler in Austin who only lists 3 tasks max per day and I gave it a try. My completion rate went from about 30 percent to over 80 percent now. Has anyone else found that scaling way back actually gets more done?

3 comments

3 Comments

shanelee1mo ago

A buddy of mine tried the opposite approach - he would cram his to-do list with like 15 items a day and then feel like a failure by noon. He switched to just 3 things he actually wanted to get done, one being something simple like "take out recycling." Now he says his brain doesn't freak out looking at the list and he ends up doing extra stuff anyway just because he feels good about checking off those 3. It's wild how such a small change flipped his whole mindset.

the_aaron1mo ago

Kills the guilt trip and tricks your brain into winning.

the_max1mo ago

Honestly the biggest shift for me was realizing that a long list actually trains your brain to ignore urgency. When everything is a priority, nothing is. I started putting my 3 tasks in order of what actually matters that day, not what feels productive to write down. Now I finish the important stuff first and the small stuff either gets done naturally or I realize it didn't need doing at all.