How It All Works

How Focusing on One Thing Each Day Can Make You Prolific

Feeling constantly busy but never truly productive? You’re not alone. Despite endless to-do lists and attempts at multitasking, many of us end the day feeling burnt out and unfulfilled. The truth is that multitasking is a myth, juggling too many tasks at once often leads to scattered attention and mediocre results. Fortunately, there’s a simpler way to stay on top of your daily responsibilities and still make meaningful progress on longer-term goals.

The Three Principles

1. Do One Thing
2. Time Blocking
3. Get It Out of Your Head

Picture this: it’s Monday morning, and your to-do list is a mile long. Emails and messages flood your inbox, meetings demand your attention, urgent work lands on your desk and that big project you’re supposed to work on feels like a distant goal. The chaos is overwhelming, you're exhausted and the question lingers: how can I ever get everything done?

The truth is, most productivity systems fail because they are tools without a process or overcomplicate the solution and make it impossible to follow. That’s why I designed a system built on three straightforward principles that cut through the noise and put you in control. It’s not about doing everything, it’s about doing the right things in the right way.

1. Do One Thing: Focus on a single, high-impact task at a time. Multitasking is a myth that drains energy and consistently delivers lower quality. Success comes from clarity and commitment.
2. Time Blocking: Structure your day into dedicated blocks for focussed work on your most important task. Schedule admin tasks and rest around it. This eliminates decision fatigue and ensures you spend time on what matters most.
3. Get It Out of Your Head: Free your mind by offloading tasks, ideas, and worries into a reliable system. When your brain isn’t cluttered, creativity and focus flourish.

By sticking to these principles, you can transform chaos into clarity and end every day with a sense of accomplishment.

The One Thing

Why focus on just one thing each day? The simple act of identifying your top priority ensures you’re devoting your energy to the tasks that genuinely matter. Most people already keep lists, but often treat every item as equally important. The result? You either neglect the most significant tasks or keep putting them off.

Radical honesty is key. When you write your list each day, force yourself to decide which item is genuinely the most important. Put it at the top and plan your day around it. Put the second most important task next. If you can identify not only your single most important task but also the top three or five, you’ll be surprised by how much more you accomplish.

Some things to follow:

• Rewrite your list daily: This helps you re-evaluate and re-prioritise your tasks.
• Break down medium-term goals: Place these smaller chunks in your top three when possible, ensuring steady progress.
• Handle the smaller tasks: If your list is 30 to 60 items long (which is perfectly fine), consider setting aside half a day, or specific time blocks, to power through the less critical but still necessary tasks.

By consistently working on your top priorities first, you’ll not only tackle urgent items but also move forward on larger, more meaningful goals. If you are able to complete your three most important tasks every day, you'll start to be prolific and impress others.

Time Blocking

Time blocking means planning your day around your most important work. Instead of letting tasks spread out randomly, you allocate specific blocks of time to focus on them, ideally without distractions.

• Batching tasks: Group similar tasks together (e.g., emails, phone calls) to minimise context-switching and save mental energy.
• Match your energy: If you know you’re more energetic and creative in the morning, schedule your most important or challenging work then. Less demanding tasks can be saved for times of lower energy.

Don’t be tempted to label yourself as ‘lazy’. Often, what appears to be laziness is really just poor energy management: we leave the toughest job until we’re tired, then wonder why we can’t tackle it effectively.

Get It Out of Your Head

Writing things down is crucial for two main reasons:

1. Clarity and Priority: By physically listing your tasks, you’re forced to confront what needs doing and decide which items outrank the others.
2. Peace of Mind: Keeping everything in your head leads to stress and the nagging fear that you’re forgetting something important. Jotting things down gives your mind the freedom to focus on the task at hand.

At the end of each day or week, review your notes. Decide which items need to go on the immediate list, and which can be scheduled for later. This habit prevents you from losing track of medium or long-term goals.

Putting It All Together

When you commit to doing just one primary task each day, plan your schedule around it, and consistently document your progress, you’ll find yourself achieving more than you thought possible. You’ll avoid the trap of equating busyness with productivity, and instead, you’ll channel your efforts into truly important work. By coupling this approach with time blocking and note-taking to put your mind at rest, you’ll steadily move forward on every front, without sacrificing your sanity.

Start small and stay honest with yourself. Select your one thing for tomorrow, block out the time to do it, and write everything else down. Day by day, you’ll notice that you not only get things done, you genuinely make progress towards bigger, more meaningful goals.

The Process

Your productivity isn’t just about working harder, it’s about working with clarity and focus. This process ensures that each day is structured for maximum effectiveness, without the chaos of scattered priorities or unfinished tasks weighing on your mind.

In summary it is as follows:

1. Review the Previous Day
2. Prioritise Today's Tasks
3. Schedule Your Day
4. Work with Focus and Adapt When Needed

This is described in more detail below

1. Review the Previous Day

Before diving into today’s work, take a moment to reflect on yesterday. This can be done at the end of your workday, helping you offload lingering thoughts so you can disconnect, or first thing in the morning, depending on what suits you best.

• Review your todos: Leave behind what no longer matters, keep what is important, and clear out the clutter.
• Review your notes: Identify any actionable insights from your notes and turn them into new tasks where needed.

This habit prevents unfinished tasks and loose ends from accumulating, keeping your workflow streamlined and stress-free.

2. Prioritise Today’s Tasks

With a clean slate, set your priorities for the current day. Ensure your todos are in order, with the most important task at the top. This isn’t just about working through a list, it’s about making deliberate choices on what deserves your energy.

3. Schedule Your Day

Now that you know what matters most, structure your day accordingly:

• Allocate focused time blocks for your most important task.
• Plan secondary tasks around it.
• Create space for admin work, breaks, and any necessary adjustments.

By scheduling your day based on your priorities, not just reacting to whatever comes up, you ensure meaningful progress without getting lost in distractions.

4. Work with Focus and Adapt When Needed

As you work, stay present and use the Workbench to capture ideas, take notes, and create new todos as necessary. If something urgent comes up, adjust your schedule, but trust your plan and resist the temptation to drop everything for minor disruptions.

The goal is to execute the plan you made, not just react to the day. Prioritisation is a skill, when you trust that you’re focusing on the right things, you make better decisions, work with less stress, and end each day with a sense of accomplishment.