Three tasks a day, and nothing else

Writing twelve lines in the morning feels organised. In practice, it's a day lost before it starts: by 6pm seven will remain, and the only thing the list will have produced is a feeling of failure. The rule of three flips the bet — you write down what you can finish.

Why three

The number isn't scientific. It's simply small enough for an ordinary day, with its meetings, its journeys and its surprises, to absorb it; and large enough that you actually make progress. Two is frustrating. Five doesn't hold up on normal days.

The most important effect isn't productivity, it's the return. A finishable list makes you want to reopen it the next day. A list that's never finished teaches your eye to avoid it, and a list you avoid is no use to anyone any more.

How to choose the three

Pick one with a real deadline — something with an actual consequence if it isn't done today. A second that moves forward something important but never urgent: the one that, otherwise, will never get done. And a third, small one, that clears a weight you've been carrying for two weeks.

This mix avoids two equally bad kinds of day: the one made up only of emergencies, and the one made up only of projects, where nothing gets ticked off.

Appointments don't count

An appointment isn't a task: it doesn't take up the same energy and you don't choose it. The three lines come on top of whatever falls at a fixed time — otherwise, a Tuesday with three meetings would be "full" without anything having moved forward.

That said, if the day already has five appointments, one line is enough. The rule of three is a ceiling, not a quota.

The rest doesn't disappear

It's the question that always comes up: what happens to the other seventeen? They stay in the full list, undated, available at any time. The difference is that they no longer watch you during the day. You see them again when you choose the next day's three lines — that is, once a day, at the moment set aside for it.

And a good number of them will end up deleted without ever being done. That's excellent news: those were the ones that didn't need to exist.

Common questions