Daily Ten

A simple way to rethink your todo list.

Being your own boss is hard. Daily Ten is a simple system I use to keep me on track with the things I want to be doing, without a nagging manager, teacher, customer or mother to help. It has two components: four day-by-day todos, and six regular tasks.

Now, I’m typically not a very organized person; checklists generally are not my thing. I’ve never had a problem plowing through big exciting projects, but staying on top of smaller, less enjoyable tasks? A perennial challenge. I wanted to find a structure with enough flexibility that it’d work for me.

In an article on productivity, Marc Andreessen wrote about an extremely simple todo list system:

Each night before you go to bed, prepare a 3x5 index card with a short list of 3 to 5 things that you will do the next day.

… Then, the next day, I try like hell to get just those things done. If I do, it was a successful day.

I loved this strategy, but after using it for a couple months I realized it wasn’t enough. Some things that I want to do just aren’t “todos”. They’re daily tasks that I may or may not get done; things like exercising or taking vitamins or journaling.

So, I created a small system that builds upon that.

I call it Daily Ten. Every day, I try to do ten things: four todos from the index card, and six regular tasks defined each month. That’s it. I don’t even expect to do all ten: I just mark down which ones I did complete in a little spreadsheet. The more x’s I marked down that day, the better the day was (yesterday was an 8/10!).

Screenshot of a week

The six regular dailies are described in a Google Doc, with specific rules for what counts, so there’s never ambiguity over whether a task has been completed and I can’t cut corners. As an example, here’s a (slightly polished) copy of my current six:

1. Take Pills: Must include Iron, Doxycycline (anti-malarial), Caffeine, and an immune booster my mother insists really works (I love you Mom!).
2. Exercise: Complete 7-minute workout OR run at least a mile (must be tracked by runkeeper) OR bike at least 6 miles OR at least 45 minutes of yoga.
3. Morning Prayer: Choose one prayer to recite in head, and give thanks.
4. Write 200 words: Must be in the same document.
5. Get to Inbox Zero: My inbox must have zero items in it at the time that I mark it as completed in the tracker.
6. Write Todos: Write down my 4 todos for the next day and finish recording all tasks completed that day. Cannot add any x’s after this one (it’s the nightcap).
7. Todo #1: (eg; “finish incorporating edits to Daily Ten blog post”)
8. Todo #2: (eg; “complete feature X on Speed Reader app”)
9. Todo #3: (eg; “fix buy Y on Speed Reader app”)
10. Todo #4: (eg; “choose & buy travel insurance”)

While I highly recommend number six to anyone looking to adopt a similar system, the other five are yours to invent.

I revisit mine every month, refining the rules before the 1st rolls around. I certainly hope that I don’t finish the year only aiming to write 200 words or run a single mile; these are stepping stones to build good habits.

I also recently started tracking the total number of tasks I completed each day with Beeminder, a more involved goal-tracking tool. My goal is to complete at least 7 of the Daily Ten on average, and so far my average has been just under 7.3.

I keep the Daily Ten Tracker spreadsheet as a pinned tab in Firefox (Chrome has pinned tabs too). I also have a widget that links to the spreadsheet on the home screen of my android phone. I carry the notebook with my 4 todos in my pocket at all times, which is useful for general purposes as well.

What I love about it

Some tasks are small and simple enough to be done anywhere in under a minute; some todos take the majority of a day. But all are equal in the eyes of the Ten.

This means if I’m procrastinating on, say, getting to Inbox Zero, but I haven’t taken my vitamins, I can whip out my pillbox and mark down an x for that quick hit of dopamine (from the spreadsheet, I swear). Since I can sub out one todo for another (they’re all equivalent!), I tend to procrastinate by getting the easier stuff done. This keeps me productive in the face of Resistance and makes me more energized to take on the big jobs.

This also means that intimidating tasks are less likely to get done. The more contained, simple, and well-defined the task is, the more likely I am to actually do it. Since I compose my todo list the night before in a conspiratorial plot against my lazy future self, I can use this knowledge to my advantage: I just break down big tasks into smaller chunks.

In the moment, we all prefer to do what’s easiest instead of what’s best. In advance, however, there’s no lazy devil on your shoulder and it’s easier to make good decisions. Daily Ten helps me move my decision-making to when I’m at my strongest, while retaining enough in-the-moment autonomy that I never feel trapped.

Background: I’m a recent college graduate, entrepreneur, and programmer. I learned a lot in the classroom, but far more outside of it. In the hopes of broadening the scope of that education, I recently embarked on a year of traveling through Asia.