The executive who terrorized me into peak productivity

Back in my corporate days, one company executive would randomly roam the halls, pop into an office, and ask, “What are your three things?”

He was asking us to identify the three most important things we needed to accomplish that week. And, until those three things were finished, we should not be working on anything else.

My office had a direct line of view down the hallway, and my anxiety would rise when I saw him on the prowl. Didn’t he understand that I had one hundred things to do that day?

But over time, I knew I had to be ready to name my “three things,” and it eventually became a habit that served me well. In fact, discipline is by far the greatest factor in my professional success and productivity.

In today’s world, it requires discipline to have discipline.

The digital age creates an entirely new level of FOMO. Every ping, buzz, and ding of the online world taunts us. An entire digital economy depends on scattering our focus and destroying our productivity.

My competitive advantage comes from the discipline of getting the important things done.

My process is embarrassingly simple:

• Everything goes on the to-do list
• The top three priorities get stars
• Nothing else happens until the stars are conquered

That’s it. No fancy productivity apps. No complex systems. Just three stars between me and chaos.

I’ve built walls around my attention. I carve out time in the morning and in the evening to read the news and email. When I open an email, I take care of it immediately — I only handle it once.

There are also three longer-term mega-goals, the big, meaty projects that require sustained effort over time. Website rewrites. Book chapters. A new speech. The things that matter in months, not minutes. These tend to be the next things I work on once the urgent stars are off the list.

Today’s post isn’t revolutionary or brain-busting. It’s not even particularly original. But in a world drunk on productivity hacks and overwhelmed by infinite possibility, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is simple:

Pick three things.

Do them.

Repeat.

At the end of the day, the person who finishes their three things beats the person drowning in thirty things.

What are your three things?

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Image courtesy Mid Journey

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