The story goes as follows: Schwab, a businessman that Thomas Edison referred to as “Master Hustler“, invited Ivy Lee, a Productivity Consultant, to his company to help increase efficiency. Ivy Lee requested 15 minutes with each of the executives and for payment, he asked for whatever Schwab felt was appropriate once he saw the result.
3 months later, Scwab wrote a check of $25,000$ in 1918, which stands to $400,000$ in 2015 after inflation.
What did Ivy Lee teach the executives in the 15 minutes? 🤔
The Ivy Lee Method
The method says:
- At the end of each day, determine what 6 important tasks you want to achieve the next day.
- Prioritize them according to their true importance.
- The next day, focus on completing the first task and only then move on to the second task.
- Any unfinished tasks get punted to the next day’s list if they are still important enough.
Simple, right? How can such a simple method be so effective?
8 Reasons Why Ivy Lee Method Is So Effective
While the Ivy Lee Method looks simple at the surface, if you look deeper you will notice that it combines multiple other productivity tips we already know about. Assuming you carry it out in its ideal form as stated above, you will notice:
- Simplicity: It’s simple to understand. But just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. Execution will require discipline like anything else.
- Prioritization: It is a prioritization technique. When you write down 6 tasks, you prioritize them over everything not written down.
- Intentional: You are not prioritizing dynamically as the tasks come to you. You are prioritizing ahead of time. By prioritizing for tomorrow instead of today, you avoid being swept up by new emails and chats first thing in the morning.
- Eat the Frog: It’s a variant of the “Eat the Frog” technique. You are forced to start with the most important task of your day.
- Focus: Forces you to single-task. Multi-tasking is a myth.
- Routine: Forces you to have an end-of-day routine. This can later be combined with other forms of reflection if required.
- Removes Friction to Start: Since you know your top priority when you start your day, you can quickly get started instead of getting trapped doing busy work.
- Limit: 6 is an arbitrary number in the method. It could have been any other number. The main goal was to limit your tasks to a finite option. Otherwise, you will have a long winding to-do list with items rotting for months.
I ❤️ the fact that Ivy Lee Method managed to condense so many other productivity techniques neatly into one method.
How to implement
You can implement it in many ways since it’s a simple technique. The simplest would be pen and paper. Just write down your 6 priorities for the next day on a paper and cross them off as you finish them. Rinse and repeat every day after work.
I didn’t opt for pen and paper since I work at two different places: Office and WFH. I decided to use Obsidian which is synced between my workstations. If I stick to it for multiple quarters, I may look to automate things more.
As usual, please remember this method is a guideline. To make it work, you will need to adapt it to fit your situation without bending the fundamentals too much.
For example, a common question asked:
Question: What do I do if something urgent/unexpected comes to my plate? 😱
Answer: Try to ignore the new task till the end of the day. Keep on focusing on your list. If it’s too pressing (think about this carefully first), deal with it and try to get back to your list ASAP.
Final Thoughts
It has been exactly 2 days since I have tried this method. It’s working alright and I have indeed managed to make solid progress at my primary projects. Whether or not it’s worth half a million dollars is yet to be seen.
My emails are piling up from doing such focused work though. I am not feeling too guilty since I am making progress on important things. I added “Check Email” as a priority for the next day since I am starting to feel stressed after ignoring it for 2 days.
I will give it a try for a while longer and let you know how things go. I urge you to give it a go too. Let me know in the comment if you notice anything difference in your workflow.