What’s up guys. Vihan here. Welcome back to the channel. Now we tend to
confuse managing time well with getting more things done. But this is actually
a huge and very common mistake. A results by volume approach has been shown time and again
to not be truly effective. Instead, we need to approach time management with the
goal of prioritization and efficiency. And this is where the Ivy Lee Method comes in.
The Ivy Lee method dates all the way back to the early 20th,
when Ivy Lee, a productivity specialist known for his work with the Rockerfeller family,
was hired by Bethlehem Steel Corporation’s president Charles Schwab to improve his company's
work efficiency. As the story goes, Lee offered to take 15 minutes to share his method with the
company’s executives for free, and after three months, the company’s output and sales improved
so dramatically that Schwab wrote Lee a check for $25,000 — the equivalent of $400,000 today.
So what was Ivy Lee’s method that changed everything for Bethlehem Steel
Corporation? Well, it’s essentially 6 step process that goes like this:
At the end of each work day, write down the six most important things
you need to accomplish tomorrow. Do not write down more than six tasks.
Prioritize those six items in order of their true importance.
On the next day, concentrate only on the first task. Work until the first task is finished
before moving on to the second task. Approach the rest of your list in the
same fashion. At the end of the day, move any unfinished items to a new
list of six tasks for the following day. Repeat this process every working day.
This method of prioritizing your to-do list sounds ridiculously simple, but the real
question you need to be asking is What makes the Ivy Lee Method so effective? Well, author
James Clear looked into what made this concept so different and mentioned some crucial factors:
The simplicity of this method makes it a real game-changer:
Now, we tend to look at simplicity as ineffective, but the truth is that complexity actually makes
it a lot harder to start new routines or habits. Some of the most powerful strategies
employ simplicity in decisions and plans, and that’s where the Ivy Lee Method stands out.
It pushes you to avoid multitasking and commit to one task at a time:
I’ve mentioned this a few times before, but we often tend to confuse multitasking with getting
more things done. When instead, it actually prevents us from reaching a state of flow with
whatever we’re working on and causes some tasks to take a lot more time than they actually need to.
It removes the difficulty of starting a task:
This method makes you have to decide your most important task the night before.
So it essentially removes the scenario where you decide whether you’re going to write for
a few hours in the morning, or whether you want to workout for a little bit first,
or even maybe watch Tik Toks until you finally decide to get out of bed. Again, getting started
is often the hardest part for so many of us and using this method helps provide a solution.
There is also something to be said about consistently performing the
same number of tasks everyday. It kind of makes it easier for your
brain to organize the information and to remember everything you need to do.
After working from home this entire year, I’ve found implementing the Ivy Lee method
to be even more useful. I end up writing down my top 6 work items and top 6 personal items
on two separate post-it notes and work my way through them. This makes me have to decide
which tasks are most urgent and which are most important. When you impose constraints on the
number of items you can do, it truly makes you have to commit to those items and not worry about
anything else. This is very similar to Warren Buffett’s 5/25 Rule for Goal-Setting. If you
haven’t seen my video on that, I’ll put a card up top and link it down right below the like button.
Now, the Ivy Lee Method recommends writing down 6 items, which may seem like an arbitrary number,
but I really think that it’s a great number to help you prioritize your to-dos,
but also be kind of reasonable about what you can accomplish on any given day. To be quite honest,
there are some days when I might go over and under the recommended 6 items depending on my bandwidth,
but I always use the 6 items as a guide to help me manage my expectations for that day.
This method is a simple, but powerful strategy for stress-free productivity
that highlights the importance of doing the most important thing first every day.
It’s a reminder that fewer priorities lead to more efficient work and output.
So if nothing else, try this method out and use it as a reminder that simplicity
can often be extremely effective to guide complex tasks, plans and goals.
If you enjoyed this video, definitely hit that subscribe button and turn
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every week. I’ve also got my 15-step productivity toolkit that you can get a copy of as well.
Link for that right below the like button. Thanks for watching. Catch you next time. Peace.