What are your 3 things a day?
Anyone who knows me well, knows that I like to get stuff done. I like it so much that I’d probably consider getting those words tattooed onto my shoulder. On most days, the desire to “tick those boxes” serves me well. But on other days, it completely destroys me.
Earlier this year, during a work trip to Hong Kong (arguably the most efficient city in the world), I crammed 35 meetings including four dinners and four breakfasts into five days. In my mind, it seemed possible. I thought: it’s so easy to get around Hong Kong even my 90-year-old grandfather could do it!
Wrong. On the final day, I nearly collapsed from exhaustion. The humidity did not help.
My colleagues demanded I cancel my afternoon meetings and swiftly sent me back to my hotel, where I was forced to lie on my back for the rest of the day.
And instead of feeling just overworked, I actually felt like a failure.
When I got back to London, my boss said to me: “Denise, you will implode if you try to achieve too much all at once.” She proposed a solution: “You should try limiting your tasks to only three a day. It can even include doing laundry.”
At first I thought,“Yeah, right! Me? Doing only three things a day? I’d feel useless!”
It turned out that writing a list of three things to do a day — and focusing on those — ironically made me feel miles more accomplished than trying to fire through 10 tasks. Because I actually get them all done! I also spent more time focusing on improving the quality of my work than obsessing over ticking the boxes. Which, by the way, was an actual obsession.
I later realised that I had basically developed a nasty habit of defining success by the sheer number of tasks at hand. The more tasks I completed, the more “useful” or “accomplished” I felt. But it also made the process of actually completing those tasks physically exhausting.
All this can be achieved by simply writing down the three things you want to accomplish into a notepad when you get into work each morning.
For the technically inclined, I highly recommend using Asana to help you organise your work (and life). Asana is a project management tool that allows you to seamlessly keep track of your work and to assign yourself and your colleagues tasks to achieve. I use Asana to ensure that I’ve assigned myself only three tasks per day. If a project is due on say, Monday, I make sure that no more than three tasks are due then as well.
Today, I still get stuff done. Just without the risk of heartburn, exhaustion and collapse.
