Ditch Your To-Do List and Do This Instead | Sam Corcos | The Tim Ferriss Show

What almost always happens is they have a long to-do

list

and they say, "Okay,

this

is what I want you to do." Take everything that's on

this

to-do

list

with the dates you think they'll be done, which is usually this week or next week, and I want you to put them on

your

calendar with the amount of time you think it'll take and then we'll have another follow up call next week and we will see what happens and then I got the call and then they say this process is not working. They say why it is like that.

While I tried to move it there, but there's not enough room in my week to fit all of these items, it's like, that's the point. The point of exercise is that there is literally not enough time. Your time is finite and the number of digital items you can add to a to-do list is infinite. You're working with the wrong constraint, which is like the number of items you can fit in a database row, as opposed to the number of things you can fit in the finite time of

your

calendar, so we then work fine , you probably need some free time during the course of the day, usually 50 is a good Note because, honestly, things are not the lazy tool, but yes, but there is extra space, you need extra space during the day, so what we work on things like, for me, I process a lot of emails, you probably do and when you say you need space during the day, you can You just briefly say more about that because from what I hear is that you have 50 of your free time, oh , but I'm not sure if now it's that, for example, tomorrow you would have 50 of your free time or that.

I mean before I schedule other things, like three weeks from now, every day you have 50 open, it's usually 50 open, so I totally understood that and as you get better, I would say I'm probably at 25 open because I've been doing this. for many years, at least five years, probably longer to the point where I can. I can estimate how long it will take me to do something to an accuracy of maybe 90. It's like I need to write a note about this. It will take me three and a half years. half an hour and I know because I've written a lot of these, I just know how long it's going to take, but it takes time to perfect it.

I would think twice if you asked most people how many calories you consume at lunch. It will be like six billion. I don't know, it's true, seven galleries, but then over time you can calibrate well, especially if you also update your calendar retroactively, which is how long it actually took me and when you realize your estimates were. or they were right, you can start honing that skill, so I always try to get people to put it in 50 open spaces because something is going to come up, a friend calls you, something happens during the day, you get a message like that .

What gets you out of trouble is that it's much easier to get something from tomorrow to today because you had extra space than to have this cascading problem that's disastrous, so I have to take this to today and the next thing you do is I know that You have this Tetris game that you're playing for a month because one thing changed in your schedule, everything breaks. These concepts come from manufacturing, where you have this line, whatever the assembly line is, you need to have slack in the system to be able to operate effectively because something will come up and if something comes up that breaks everything.

Downstream, that's a real problem and over time, as you get better, you can reduce that amount of slack, but 50 is a pretty good goal, so you have As my goal for today, I will have a four hour block where I'll do X and then have some time to myself. I know I need to process emails or communications in general for at least two hours a day so I just have those blocks every day they just repeat so when I start scheduling things it's like I can't actually fit this in because it's not I can't send my email, this is my role that requires a lot of email, so it's just plain as day, I can't do this on Thursday.

I can do it next week from a process perspective. So start imagining, not at this point, but just to have a very clear understanding. Let's say you're looking at next week. If you have these recurring email blocks that are already there, you may have other repeating blocks and I would be curious to know what they are, so let's mark that when you look say to-dos that will be converted to calendar or not for next week, What does that process look like? Do you maybe start with a to-do list and then you go to your EA and she tries to fit them in during the expected time?

What does that do? It seems like from start to finish the answer is to simply skip the to-do list step entirely, so that when I receive a new task, many of my tasks effectively arrive via email, so I will receive an email email and this is also Another thing I worked on with a couple of people who really struggled with email and what they struggle with is using their email as a to-do list, which is a very common thing for people to do. ago, it creates a lot of anxiety when you have this pile of uncategorized stuff, it could be 15 minutes, it could be 50 hours, you have no idea until you open each one individually to calculate how much work is involved and therefore the very process of translating your to-do list on your calendar, you can do the same with email.

I work with someone recently and I said, "Okay, let's open every email." How long will it take you to respond? These are like the thicker ones, they're like 30 minutes. Brilliant. The market is ready. copy the link and put that link in your calendar, so you will spend this 30 minute block responding to this email. What's next? It will take me a full hour because I have to write something that will be interesting to them. of the inbox then you actually have some ability to schedule, yes, the right amount of time to respond to these things, so that you're not looking at this undifferentiated pile of exactly what you're opening multiple times marking unread going back to forgetting what you read reading for the seventeenth time or whatever it is, it's kind of stressful, it's very stressful to have this list of things, it's just an ambiguous amount of effort, it relieves the stress by getting a good look at it.

I will do it on Thursday of next week and I have nothing I have nothing pending at this moment I have not let any balls slip because I know that everything that is urgent and that had to be done today has already been done and there is nothing, there are no ambiguous deadlines that are coming up and I don't know because you're on my calendar and if you change it, this is where closing the loop is a useful factor, meaning, if you say I'm going to block this for Thursday, you can tell that person, hey, I'll get back to you on Thursday and then if you have to move it, now you know you can say, Hey, something came up.

I'll send it to you on Monday and you can keep them informed about it

instead

of just dropping the ball ambiguously, so for me, when I get a new task, it immediately goes into my calendar, so if someone said, "Hey, "Can you write a note on this topic so this team has context for where it's been going over the last year?" You need it soon, tell me, can you deliver it to me before Wednesday? I'll go to my calendar and block out two hours because I think that's how long it will take. I will block two hours on Tuesday.

I have it open and I'll say great, I'll have two by Tuesday night and that's it, the calendar is the to-do list.