Our habits have the power to make us or break us. That’s why it’s crucial that we learn how to establish ones that will facilitate our success. Keep reading to learn about my “3 daily priorities” list which I’ve used to help me become more productive and successful in life!

I truly believe that our habits turn us into the people we become and have a huge amount of influence over what we achieve in life. Depending on the research you’re looking at, our habits influence up to 40-50% of our daily activities. That’s why I’ve worked hard to develop my 3 daily priorities technique to help me fine tune my productivity.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: You’ve got so many competing tasks, assignments, goals, and a seemingly never-ending to-do list. You don’t know what to do or what to work on because you just can’t figure out where to start. You plan and plan, and work and work and it seems like you’re always busy, yet it doesn’t seem like you’re getting much done. Or, at least not as much as you want to get done.

I know this absolutely used to be a situation I used to commonly find myself in. It’s what lead to me ironing out my 3 daily priorities method so that I could become much more productive and effective as I worked towards my goals.

The 3 Daily Priorities Productivity Technique

The 3 daily priorities technique is very powerful, but it’s also surprisingly simple to implement.

Basically, what this method involves is creating a short list every single day of what you’re going to focus on over the course of any given day.

I like to create my list before I go to bed. Every night before I sleep, I’ll create my list of 3 daily priorities. These will be the 3 tasks that I absolutely have to accomplish tomorrow.

Implementing this tactic will have many positive benefits in your life. The two most important will no doubt be that this list will allow you to focus your energy on particular tasks and be more effective and productive at striking things off your to-do list.

Obviously, this list has some criteria though.

It really doesn’t matter how much I focus in on my 3 daily priorities if on that list I’ve included tasks such as write a novel, build a shed, and exercise for 4 hours. Now, maybe you’re superhuman and that’s a realistic list for you. But for me and many others, that list is a little too ridiculous for a single day.

So let’s now break down the criteria a for a task on your 3 daily priorities list.

Criteria for Individual Tasks On Your 3 Daily Priorities List

The criteria you use to define your list will likely vary based on who you are, what your values are, and what you’re looking to achieve. But there should be a few common considerations we should all make as we form our daily priorities lists.

Manageability

First of all, your list needs to be manageable. You’ve seen that I refer to this as my 3 daily priorities list. That’s because most days, that’s a number that makes sense for me. If you feel you can manage more, such as 4 or 5, or if you feel that you would be more comfortable with a daily list of 2 priorities do that! The most important aspect of this list is that you should be able to handle what’s on it every day.

Also, the size of the individual tasks on your priorities list should be influenced by the amount of time you have over the course of the day to dedicate to completing them. Obviously, if you work 9-5, your daily priorities list and the tasks you include on it should be smaller during your workdays and, if you want, your days off can be saved for the bigger tasks, or to simply get a greater number of smaller tasks done.

Save Time for You

An important caveat here is that you shouldn’t allow your list to take up all your free time. For example, as I make up my list for my days off, I don’t plan for my 3 daily priorities to consume all my waking hours. This has two effects. If anyone task takes longer than you expected, you won’t end up behind schedule. Also, if you stick to your schedule, you’ll end up with extra time to get other things done, or to simply sit back, relax, and enjoy life. I guess that’s assuming one of your priorities wasn’t to sit back and relax in the first place haha.

Enjoy It

Though you won’t always enjoy every task you put on your daily priorities list, try to make the process of completing the list enjoyable. For example, today on my 3 daily priorities list I included the creation of my budget for the month. Now, some people may enjoy creating budgets, but personally, I don’t. I like my finances to be simple and straightforward. However, when I completed that task, I took a break to go out for a walk afterward, which was enjoyable. This provided me with a small form of positive reinforcement for completing that task as well as reenergized me to keep tackling the other tasks on my priorities list.

Now you may not go for a walk as a reward, just choose something that gives you a little boost. You may even decide to include a regular “celebration task” at the end of your daily priorities list to encourage you to complete it. I’d love to sit here and tell you how to reward yourself and what with, but I don’t know you well enough yet. You know who does know you well enough to do this though…. YOU DO! So get creative and come up with some positive reinforcement activities to help motivate you to crush your priorities list each and every day!

Overall, each task should be manageable and the size of the individual tasks should be influenced by the amount of time you have over the course of the day to dedicate to them. And, when you can, try to make the process enjoyable. Though your specific criteria may differ, as I said above, depending on your values and goals, these are some commonalities to consider. If you have different criteria that you can think of by all means share those in the comments below to help others out!  

Wrapping Up

If you take one thing away from this post, it’s that you should be setting a few priorities every day for you to tackle. This prevents you from spreading your efforts all over the place so much that you get nothing done, resulting in “project paralysis”.

I hope you found this post informative and that you’re willing to take a shot and implement this technique into your own life. If you do, I’d love to hear about it. If you want to tell me about it either leave me a comment down below or send me an email directly on the contact page!

Also, if you have any follow-up topics relevant to today’s post feel free to send those to me as well. I’m looking to address your balanced living needs as best I can. When you take the time to tell me about your pain points it makes it a lot easier for me to develop personalized content for you to consume!

Stay excellent until next time everyone!

Sincerely,

Mark