The Minimum Viable Day: Stop Being Overwhelmed by Your Task List
Ultimately, what matters is what I did, not what I’ve planned.
Life has a never-ending supply of tasks for you.
You can easily get buried.
I was never able to plan and do them all. Believe me, I tried. There is always more to do. You have your perfect schedule, and then a water leak appears. Or your old friend visits the country.
Do you have goals on top of that? Great, you add more to the infinite stack. Which action to take if you have so many possibilities?
I thought a better tool would fix my problem. That someday, I’ll optimize my schedule so much to finish everything.
Yeah, sure.
But it’s not a tragic story. I realized that the problem was not the amount of work. The problem was my assumption I must do all of it. It was a problem of focus and prioritization.
After 2 years of fighting with my ego, I found a way out. Below you’ll find out what I do now. Each of those ideas helps me a lot. Crippling anxiety transformed into a motivation to do things. The existential fear of not doing enough became a past. I do enough.
You must do enough. Discover what that means and how to achieve it without spending two years on testing frameworks and tools.
There is Always More to Do, and No Tool Can Fix That
Let’s start big. You can never finish everything.
I know, what a bummer.
You thought this would be a master productivity article that gives you everything you want. And I start by telling you can’t.
But this is what happens. Life is change. You plan, schedule, execute, and in the meantime, sh*t you never thought about happens! Next time you will, right?
Maybe, but next time something else will happen.
Never underestimate the creativity of reality in throwing unique events at you. There is no tool to fix the infinity of the scope of your life.
Actually, there is one.
Accept you can never finish everything.
I lied to myself that with better tools, more paid subscriptions, another Obsidian plugin, and another planning ritual, I’ll, one day, finish everything.
The last thing I was ready to do was to accept I couldn’t. It’d mean I gave up. I never give up.
To never give up, I tested many services to manage my tasks: Microsoft To-Do, TickTick, Todoist, Jira, Monday, Notion, Evernote, Keep notes, ClickUp, and To Do One (that’s one is mine, not finished, leave a comment if you want to test it out)
Well, it turned out acceptance is not equal to giving up. It’s like regrouping. You can discuss the issue from a new perspective. After accepting that I’m finite and my task list is not, I stopped searching for a better tomorrow.
Today is OK to enjoy, so I used what I had in my hands.
The system I’m using is Pen and Paper ready, inspired by Oliver Burkeman. I call it To Do One, and I describe it further in the article. I know, another tool, but one that finally simplifies the process. That was a breath of fresh air I needed. Managing your tasks should be simple.
You’ll do it every day.
To make it a breeze:
- accept that your finite time can’t accommodate the infinite tasks life has for you
- no tool can change that
- so select any tool and do the work
Minimum Viable Day — Manage Expectations
Clashing with reality is painful.
Never being able to deliver everything is harsh.
As mentioned, life is a master of surprises. That’s the light way of saying it can screw you up good. But only if you let it. What happens may be outside your control, but how do you react?
Oh, that’s on you.
So, we know that life can get overwhelming quickly. You don’t have to complicate it. It happens automatically. The best thing I did was move out of the way. Why make it any harder than it already is?
To counter, I’m managing expectations.
Doing everything is off a plate. What’s left is enjoying what I can do. As for how I’m using the Minimum Viable Day idea, it consists of tasks split like this:
- 1 super important task
- 3 medium-importance tasks
- 5 small tasks
When I finish them, I treat the day as productive. I couldn’t believe this would work. But I was wrong, like usual. It works because I know what a good day means to me.
Manage expectations. Prepare your Minimum Viable Day. Start with 1–3–5 tasks split, then make yours if you don’t like rigidity.
What’s the Most Important Task for Today?
You won’t get far without identifying what’s important to you.
Find exactly what is the most important task for you to do. It must push the needle. Do it first thing in the morning. Reap the energy from it for the rest of the day. Conquer your life by doing what’s the most effective.
I opposed this idea for years.
I believed I must do as many things as possible. Many small tasks looked like a bigger gain than one big. The task lists have that problem. Every task looks the same. So I did Duolingo, meditated, journaled, worked, and read. But my dream is to be a full-time writer.
What’s the most important task to do if you want to be a writer?
Don’t complicate it. It’s writing. I need something to distribute. I need skill. I need to write.
Once, I tried to wake up and write.
That day I cleared my tasks list. I did every one of them. And some more. My energy was only rising. Doing what I knew was the most important to get my goals set me on fire.
Find your most important task and start your day with it.
To Do One — focus On One Thing You’re Doing Now
If you’re like me, having 20 tasks scheduled daily makes you anxious.
The best thing to do is trim down the schedule. I tried many times and ended up with 15 tasks on Sunday. Better, but still overwhelming. Focusing on the current task is hard when I see the list. So, I hide it.
With To Do One.
How to do it?
- Make a list of your tasks for the day
- Sort them by priority
- Remember that the most important one comes first
- Write down the one from the top somewhere
- You can’t see the list while working on your task
- When you finish, take another one
- Hide the list
I started with Pen and Paper, but it got boring. I don’t want to rewrite the same tasks every day. To solve the issue, I’ve created an app that does it. It’s a task manager with recurring tasks and The One View.
One View has two purposes:
- show you what you must focus on right now
- give you a feeling of accomplishment
To deliver that, it displays your currently active task, and there is a growing list of tasks in the background.
But you can simulate this behavior however you want.
The shorter I procrastinate looking at my list, the better I feel. Ultimately, what matters is what I did, not what I’ve planned. You’ll decrease your anxiety by increasing the focus on doing. Focusing on doing improves deliverability.
Trick your monkey brain and show it only the current thing to do.
Summary
The stream of life’s challenges is infinite. Being overwhelmed is a default. But there is help. I’ve always been there, and now I’m there only sometimes.
Instead of wasting life searching for better tools that allow you to do everything, accept that you can’t.
Help yourself enjoy the moment. Define your Minimum Viable Day. Planning only what you can finish is hard, so until you become a master, learn to enjoy what you did.
Start the day with the most important task. Reap the energy that comes from that and conquer the day. Wake up knowing what to do.
Make use of your anxiety to finish the work you’re doing. Hide your tasks list from yourself. See only what you do now. That’s how you focus. That’s how you get shit done.
To put it in one sentence, use anxiety for your benefit. Channel it to start the work. And when you work, never distract yourself by looking at what’s next.
My life got simpler since I realized there is always more work. Yours will get simpler too.
Enjoy.
