On most days my task manager displays anywhere from five to twenty‐five different tasks that I have scheduled for myself. For years I thought of these tasks as a list of priorities, but a few years ago I threw out that term.
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?
In Greg McKeown's Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, he points out that our use of the word “priorities” is a modern invention and it does not 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” (McKeown 2014, 16).
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.
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 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 twenty‐four 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 trying to live in two worlds at the same time: the present moment with one important task and a future moment with another.
Because 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 (distraction‐free time with a singular purpose) to ever do anything important.
Living in two worlds is exhausting, overwhelming, and only makes us more stressed out. What happens when you imagine a huge project, a long task list, or an overstuffed calendar?
This may be your reality every day, and if so, it is mayhem!
It is undeniably overwhelming to imagine doing a hundred things at the same time, let alone deciding which one to do first.
Go ahead and get out your to‐do list for today. Look at it closely and ask yourself these five key questions:
What amazes me is that when I analyze my task list using these five questions, I always find many ways to simplify the chaos.
I always end up deleting unnecessary tasks, rescheduling projects for another day, 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 is right in front of you.
Even today, as I am writing this chapter, I already know there are other important tasks to be accomplished, and none of them are my priorities. Writing this chapter is my priority at this very moment as I type these words.
My upcoming projects will wait. They will wait until it is their turn. They will wait until they become my priority, my next most urgent and important task.
It is 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 is also why the subtitle to David Allen's famous book Getting Things Done is “The Art of Stress‐Free Productivity.”
That is the goal, and it is certainly possible to achieve with a singular focus.
Now that you have completed your self‐evaluation and time audit, you likely have much more clarity about what is going on in your life at the moment.
The second step of The Free‐Time Formula is to clarify what matters most in this season of your life, and it is divided into two parts: defining your vital few goals and determining what to do next.
What matters now will certainly change, shift, and evolve as you do, so the steps in these next two chapters will need to be repeated over time.
Set aside everything for just a moment.
Clarifying your highest objectives in life is ideally based upon your highest standards for what a great life should be. Assuming you could start your life over again with a fresh new beginning, there are likely many changes, both big and small, that you would make.
Let's take a look at a classic example, knowing what you know now, what changes would you make if you could go back in time and try again?
Your values, what you consider to be of great importance, are the most important filters you use to see the world, and could dramatically shift the life‐altering decisions that you have made over the years.
What you determine to be worthy and true dictates your career decisions, political persuasions, relationships, and work ethic. Having full awareness of your values, and acting on them, can change your entire life for the better.
For our purposes regarding free time:
I used to obsess over my bucket list.
Back in my early twenties, I would spend hours brainstorming enormous goals, thinking about all of the many adventures I could embark upon and the many places I could travel.
Today, I no longer find bucket lists valuable for practical goal achievement.
Yes, it is fun to brainstorm just how many mountains I could see myself climbing one day, but I quickly concluded that the bucket list goals were either distant fantasies with no basis in reality, or they were someone else's dream for a life I never wanted.
I no longer have a traditional bucket list to set quarterly goals, but I do use and love the exercise of brainstorming ambitious pursuits to clarify my vision of a beautiful life.
Dreaming about how your life could be on a grand scale is indicative of what you value and what your current goals would look like if they evolved significantly over time.
To craft more free time in your life today, consider these questions:
I love doing chores.
My mother will be proud of this one, mostly because I am fairly certain she is the reason this is true about my life.
Doing the laundry, washing dishes, taking out the trash, and even paying bills are all activities I find rewarding.
As a Type A guy who finds checklists appealing, anything that allows me to accomplish a task, cross it off my list, and visually see the result brings a smile to my face and a true sense of accomplishment and fulfillment.
However, not all responsibilities fall into this personality quirk.
To fully understand what matters most to you, there needs to be a clear sense of what could go wrong if some things never got done—regardless of whether you enjoy the task or not.
If you never took out the trash, there are real consequences to that decision.
If you stopped going to work, quit mowing your grass, or gave up on shaving any body hair ever again—things are going to be real hairy real fast.
We all have responsibilities, obligations, job descriptions, and must‐do projects. Though I argued that free time is a myth and that all of our time is up to us, there are clear high‐value tasks that need to be completed to both prevent disasters and propel us forward.
Green is the new red.
Green pens are the answer to many productivity problems as they do the opposite of the red ones.
While red pens are traditionally used to highlight mistakes, corrections, edits, and problem spots, green pens highlight our triumphs. They shower us with compliments and expose the amazing talents we possess.
Green pens scour through the mess of our lives and reveal the best parts: our successes, victories, and most brilliant moments.
While editing a previous book a few years ago, I noticed one big issue that kept popping up: I hated most of what I wrote. I could not stand the babble, the endless stories that went nowhere, the random advice that did not relate to my thesis, the fact that I did not have a thesis …
In a fit of rage, I decided that instead of trying to tweak the book with improved grammar, or attempting to rephrase poor sentence structure, I would only highlight the material that stood out as spectacular.
I began actively searching for my best work.
I knew it was buried deep in the text; I just needed to find it. After I highlighted my best material, I cut the rest, removing every word that was not worthy of a green pen.
In the process, the overall book length was cut in half. A few chapters were eliminated. Other chapters went from more than twenty pages down to two paragraphs.
What remained was a small selection of high‐quality text. It was not ready for publication yet, but I was significantly closer to my goal of creating a book worth reading.
You may not be working on your next best‐selling novel, but I bet your life could use some fancy green pens. You and I both know where we need to improve. We hear it from our boss, our spouse, our preacher, the television, and even our best friends.
What we often miss is what makes us remarkable. Our successes are so often overshadowed by our mistakes that we use the vast majority of our brain (and spend the vast majority of our time) consumed with negativity.
Your goals will ideally represent the very best you have to offer. Your goals will challenge you to become a higher and better version of you by focusing on your strengths, natural talents, and innate passions.
If we identify what works well, and duplicate that to the extreme, we get extremely powerful results. Use your green pen as you analyze your life, work, and goals. Uncover the brilliance that is already there and bring it out to shine.
Your green pen is one secret weapon you now have to narrow your choices on what matters most in your life.
It is time to take a deep dive into your responses on the Self‐Evaluation, as well as the results of your Time Audit.
Carefully review your responses to each question in every category.
Then, consider the potential for each area, focusing on clarifying what matters most now.
Review the data you collected during Phase I of your Time Audit.
Let's review.
You have defined your values, set your vision, reviewed your responsibilities, discovered where you are excelling using your green pen, and analyzed your Self‐Evaluation and Time Audit results.
This is a large amount of data that should provide phenomenal clarity on where you are today and what you want for tomorrow.
Now is your time to commit to your vital few goals—the ambitious pursuits that will define what you focus on in the coming weeks. This is not a permanent decision, so try not to get hung up on perfectionism.
Whatever you choose now can be changed.
However, based upon the work you have already done, you likely already know exactly what matters most now. It is probably staring you right in the face.
If not, go back and review your data again. Look over your evaluation results with a close friend. Share your thoughts with someone you trust and get their opinion on your next best move.
The vital few goals you choose now will be used to build your schedule and, ultimately, will determine how your time is best utilized.
To guarantee more free time, we first need to guarantee that the bulk of your time is optimized with the fewest number of activities that bring the best results.
Darren Hardy, the former publisher of SUCCESS Magazine, made a dramatic shift in his early twenties with his career in real estate. He realized he was doing everything backward.
With a stopwatch in hand, Darren timed himself to see how long he was spending each day on his most important tasks: pitching a listing, negotiating a contract, and prospecting.
On the first day, he totaled out at just nineteen minutes and fifty‐four seconds.
Appalled, he decided to increase that number little by little until he was spending a significant part of each day doing his most important work, and getting the dramatic increase in results he expected.
His plan worked. His business boomed, and he went on to develop a highly profitable career in real estate—far surpassing his more experienced peers.
Using a stopwatch, Darren was able to quantify exactly how much time he was spending on his cleared‐defined priority (Hardy, 2016).
Now that you have defined your vital few goals, it is time for you to do the same and double‐check your progress with Phase II of the Time Audit
Just as before, choose your recording device and a day on your calendar. Get out your stopwatch and calculate the amount of time you spent on your vital few goals.
Once you know how much actual time is being spent on the vital few things that you claim matter most, you can then incrementally increase that number, and incrementally increase your results.
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 twenty‐four hours, but only one task is the supreme task right now.
Sometimes what matters most is obvious, but often it is quite challenging to articulate what the best use of our time should be. When you follow the steps, you can collect helpful information that paints a clear picture of your vital few goals in this season.
Spending quality time reviewing your values and vision for the future can greatly enhance your confidence in how to best approach scheduling your day.
Review your responses to each question of the Evaluation, noting areas where you feel confident, as well as notable areas that could be significantly improved. Note in your Time Audit where you spent the majority of your time, and any time blocks that appear to be off track.
Write down the one or two grand goals that will direct the majority of your focus in the coming weeks. These goals will become your filter for deciding how to best utilize your time.
After recording what matters most to you, find out how much time you actually spend working on those goals. If you find that the results are not ideal, make a plan to improve your schedule in the following week. Focus on crafting guaranteed blocks of time for your vital few objectives.