Five minutes of writing before work
Your brain is a terrible to-do list. Trying to hold everything in your head is like running 20 apps in the background on your phone. Everything slows down.
So every morning, before I look at my phone or my email, I spend five minutes emptying my head onto paper. I do it even on days when I feel on top of things. For me it's a bit like clearing the cache on a computer.
Here's how:
Open a notebook, a blank page or a notes app.
Set five minutes and write down everything on your mind. Tasks, worries, ideas, random thoughts. Don't filter it and don't organise it.
Pick three. Not ten, not seven, three. Which three things would make today feel like a win if you got them done? Circle them.
Start with those. If you can, put the hardest one in the part of the day when you've got the most energy.
I use two small Field Notes books for this, one for work and one for home, and put each thing in the right one. I also carry a pocket notebook through the day for anything I'd otherwise try to remember, and I check it each morning as part of the brain dump.
If you only try one thing from this, make it the five minutes before you open your inbox. Once it's on the page, you can actually think.
Let me know if you give it a go, and what ends up on your list of three.
