How Many #1s Are On Your To-Do List?

On any given day my task manager, Nozbe, displays anywhere from 5 to 25 different tasks that I have scheduled for myself. For years I thought of these tasks as a list of priorities, but a few months ago I threw out that term.

Photo Credit: Courtney Dirks

My guess is that you have a dozen or more individual tasks to complete on most days. But how many of them are must-dos?

How many absolutely have to get done today?

Most importantly, how many of those tasks would you qualify as priorities?

Priorities Don’t Exist

Greg McKeown,’s book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, quickly became one of my all-time favorite books on productivity when I read it last summer.

One of the key points he makes right in the beginning is that our use of the word “priorities” is actually a modern invention and it doesn’t make any sense.

“The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities.”

In other words, we have misconstrued and abused a simple word. We think we have two, three, or twelve priorities at any given time, when in actuality we only have one because we can never have anything else.

Our misuse of the word priority is backfiring on us and causing a wave of overwhelm in our already busy lives.

Your “Priorities” Are Making You Less Productive

Having more than one priority is a lie. Every time you use the plural form of that word you are lying to yourself about what actually matters in the present moment.

We can truly only ever do one thing at a time and in any given moment we only have one task that is at the top of the list. We may have many tasks we would like to accomplish over the course of the next 24 hours, but only one task is the supreme task right now.

When you view your to-do list as a collection of priorities you are automatically living in two worlds: the present moment and a series of random future moments.

Since our brain can only consciously do one thing at a time, we end up switching back and forth between ideas. This is the plight of multitasking and why it makes sense to use focused blocks of time to ever do anything.

Living in two worlds is exhausting, overwhelming, and only makes us more stressed out. Think about it, what happens when you imagine a huge project, a long task list, or an over-stuffed calendar?

CHAOS!

MAYHEM!

MADNESS!

You may not have that same reaction, but it is undeniably overwhelming to imagine doing 100 things at the same time, let alone deciding which one to do first.

5 Questions to Assess Your Task List for Today

Go ahead and get out your to-do list for today. Look at it closely and ask yourself these 5 key questions:

1. Are there any tasks on the list that I already know could be eliminated forever?
2. Are there any tasks on this list that I already know could be rescheduled for another day?
3. How many of these tasks are definitely due today and could not be rescheduled without a phenomenal effort on my part?
4. Are there any tasks on this list that could be quickly and reasonably delegated to someone else?
5. If I had to pick just ONE task on this list to accomplish today, which one would it be?

What amazes me is that when I analyze my task list using these 5 questions, I always find many ways to simplify the chaos.

I always end up deleting unnecessary tasks, rescheduling projects for another day that makes more sense, and clearing up a lot of needed margin so that I can maintain my sanity and sense of presence throughout the day.

What you will find right away is that when you can focus on just one task, the next most important one, you can enter the zone, the magical place where nothing else matters except what’s right in front of you.

As I am writing this article today I already know there are other important tasks to be accomplished. None of them are priorities. Writing this article is my priority in this very moment as I type these words.

My next projects will wait. They will wait until it’s their turn. They will wait until they become my priority, my next most urgent and important task.

It’s true. Other tasks can and will wait their turn because there is no other option.

Finding peace with that reality is the one thing that will lead to lower blood pressure AND greater productivity every day.

That’s why the subtitle to David Allen‘s famous book, Getting Things Done, is “The Art of Stress Free Productivity.”

That’s the goal and it’s certainly possible to achieve with a singular focus.

Next Week

Next week on the blog I will be discussing why you should never paint your office walls white.