before we dive into today's bento methodology you can check out bento on product hunt and get
it there any support would be amazing so you can check the link in the description below
so today's video i wanted to dive into the bento methodology i want to explore our mission to help
you do less but more meaningful tasks and why bento is a complementary application
to your to-do and project management apps so let's dive in in today's video
so as i said we've been working on an application for the last couple of months
and i wanted today to talk about the methodology behind that now the actual application bento is
available for ios and shortly will be available for android but the actual framework behind it
is really something that's quite special and it's something that whilst you can pretty much optimize
it inside the benzo app it's all designed and ready for you there you can use it inside of
your existing applications now our mission is to help you reduce task overwhelm so as i said we're
not replacing your to-do list we're helping you to prioritize tasks that really matter on that
to-do list so it's a complimentary companion application versus being a full replacement
we don't want to do that now i want to talk through the three bento principles so the
first principle is packing now packing your bento is something that we've designed very much like
around how you pack your bento box for example it could be a lunch box for the morning or in a
restaurant that you may be going to you pack them in different compartments and inside of the bento
method you're forced to prioritize three tasks and those tasks are narrowed into three compartments
large medium and small now as i said we've made this super simple to understand large is any
task that's needed for deep focus this means as little distractions as possible including meetings
medium is for tasks with a medium level of energy and focus but not all of your attention
and a small is for an easy win that could be an administrative task or a personal well-being task
now we've really designed this on helping you do less so this level of prioritization is really
important because we believe it's actually one of the biggest problems in the space right now and
having some sort of system that narrows you down to three tasks could be really really helpful now
inside the bento you can create three tasks per box and you can use it to plan a full week ahead
if you want to but there's different ways you can use it and we'll talk about that in another video
the next principle in bento is flow now now you've got your three tasks in your bento box
it's time to apply some helpful workflows to suit your energy levels during the day
now you can choose from free workflow approaches eat that frog climb the summit or slow burn
now these have really cool names eat that frog is actually designed from the brian tracy classic
productivity book from the late 1990s and this workflow is very simple you start with your most
important task your large task in your bento you move on to your medium and you finish with your
small this particular workflow is more suitable for people who like to hit the day with the ground
running and really want to complete the largest thing on their list first more for morning people
but also sometimes more for people who want to sort of well eat that frog as they start their day
next up is climb the summit and this is a more of a balanced approach and it really starts with the
medium task helping you move to the biggest one large and finishing with your small task and slow
burn is the opposite to eat that frog it's perfect for slow starters maybe you had a late night
or your energy levels peak in the afternoon you start with your small you go to your medium and
you finish with your large so once you've chosen your three tasks you simply choose a workflow
that best suits them and that's very simply the order and you can change that day by day
because we're all different day by day we might wake up not feeling like we want to accomplish the
first thing but others might be more consistent and just have a workflow that they can work with
the final part of the bento principles is focus and we believe deep focus is key to completing
your bento box each day and we've done that in a few different ways the first is a one task mind
the key to completing each of your tasks is entering a state of deep work a theory by cal
newport that helps us accomplish more avoiding context switching so you don't get distracted
and blocking out any distractions so you can keep that focused on that key task in particular inside
of the application we actually do this by blocking out all of the other tasks and having this zone in
zen mode which really does help you focus the next is a suggested criteria now we talked a
little bit about the small medium and large tasks but here's a little bit more about how
you can truly define them now obviously these are recommendations and everyone's different so adapt
these to your needs but a small task is normally light and habitual it's 15 to 30 minutes long
it's administrative or well-being and a good example to them could be clearing your email
yoga sessions or filing documents a medium task is a bit more balanced it's analytical
it's about 45 to 60 minutes long and it's normally project oriented orientated or process based
and we've recommended that if you have any incoming work this might be a great place for
incoming tasks to come into your system midway through the day as the hectic day approaches
for example these could be an email campaign scheduling social media or finishing presentation
now let's look at the large task the large task is actually creative and intense and it's about
90 plus minutes and it's very very deliverable orientated for example it could be write a report
edit a video or a project deliverable something that has an actual big achievement to it or
some sort of completion at the end that's really been key for us to creating a large
task and the third way that you can approach focus is by preparing your bento boxes in advance
there's actually a few ways that you can do that for example you could create your tasks for the
week you could create five boxes for the work week or seven boxes for all of your sort of week ahead
and we've kept it at seven in order so you don't create too many lists as you go ahead
now the goals as well you can use that for goals you can plan your week objectives your month
objectives and even your year objectives inside of bento and this is more so that you've got it
as a priority as a focus almost like pinning it inside of your bento app in particular and also
stints if you're somebody that normally can't narrow down their tasks to three you could for
example use a bento box for the morning afternoon and evening with three separate boxes although we
don't typically recommend that outright now as you can imagine you can use a countdown timer
when you're focusing on tasks and inside of the application we've actually added that edition
now i'm going to do a separate faq about this so if you have any questions and please do address
them in the comments below it'd be amazing to have some of your thoughts but this is the bento
methodology and we're really excited to dive a little bit deeper into it in today's video thank
you so much and stay tuned for our full course which will become available soon and i'll put that
in the link in description thank you very much folks and i'll talk to you all very soon cheerio
you