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by andygcook 4202 days ago
I developed a similar system to this last year, but instead of defining my tasks for the week, I'd just choose the three most important tasks I wanted to get done for the day at the beginning of each morning.

If I got my three tasks done, it was a productive day and anything else I did was gravy. If I didn't, I forced myself to look back at what I spent my time on that day. The three-task system helped me get focused to avoid "fake work" like meetings, emails, etc.

I eventually coded it up into a simple tool for myself that I still use every day. I haven't focused on marketing so I'm honestly the only user, but I'd love if the folks here could check it out and tell me what you think - http://three.do

4 comments

That's similar to the ZenToDone system with the 3 daily MIT's (most important things) http://zenhabits.net/purpose-your-day-most-important-task/ There is an iphone app
Thanks for sharing. I didn't know about this one and will check it out.
This is great Andy - thanks for sharing that. Three.do is essentially a digital version of the '3 things for an incredible day' that I have as part of my daily ritual.

I image it will do really well :)

Nice site. On the front page it would be nice to see what it looks like after a couple of weeks using: will the user see a "heat map" of activities done/not done?
Thanks! I'm working on designing a heat map feature similar to GitHub commits that'll show you a historical record of how you're doing over time.

My eventual plan is to build a team version, so instead of asking your teammates, "what are you working on today?" you could just check out their three most important tasks. There would also be a weekly wrap up email sharing who did what for the week.

I love these light-weight approaches and tools. I do something very similar using a todo.txt file, except I try to do 5 things.
Agreed and thanks for the positive vibes. My MVP for this system was actually a small moleskin notebook and a to-do list stamp with three tasks from Etsy.

I found that without a daily reminder email, I forgot to write out my tasks for the day, so I built out a light-weight web app to scratch my own itch and build the habit.

I've also tried variations around the number of tasks with one thing, five things, ten things, etc. Three primary things a day seems to be best amount for me to compete each day, but I'm sure the number of tasks probably depends on personal preference.