Ivy Lee Method and How Six Tasks a Day Keep You Focused

You end the day with a to-do list of 23 items, a vague sense of having been busy, and no idea which of those items actually mattered. The Ivy Lee method fixes that with a rule so plain it feels almost too simple: six tasks, in order, decided the night before.

It is more than a hundred years old, it needs nothing but a scrap of paper, and in my experience as someone who writes about planning for a living, it is the method people are most likely to still be using three months after they start.

What the Ivy Lee method is

The story goes back to 1918. Charles Schwab, then running Bethlehem Steel, asked a productivity consultant named Ivy Lee how to get more done. Lee asked for fifteen minutes with each executive and gave them one instruction. Schwab reportedly paid him 25,000 dollars after three months, a sizeable fortune at the time.

The instruction was this:

1. At the end of each workday, write down the six most important things you need to do tomorrow. No more than six.
2. Rank them in order of true importance.
3. The next day, start with task one and work on it until it is finished before moving to task two.
4. Work down the list. At the end of the day, move anything unfinished to a new list of six for the following day.
5. Repeat every working day.

That is all of it. No apps, no colour coding, no categories. The power is in the constraints.

Why six tasks and a fixed order work

Three things are happening under the surface.

The limit forces choices. When you can only write six items, you have to decide which ones matter. That decision is the hard part of planning, and a long list lets you avoid it forever. If your current list keeps growing without anything important getting done, you are seeing the exact problem we described in why your to-do list isn't working.

Planning the night before removes the morning decision. You sit down and the first task is already chosen. The 20 to 30 minutes many people lose each morning deciding what to start on simply disappear.

Working in order stops task hopping. When you only have permission to work on task one, you cannot drift to the easy email or the satisfying small job. Each switch you skip saves the several minutes it takes to get your attention back.

How to use the Ivy Lee method this week

Here is a practical version for a modern job with meetings, messages and interruptions.

Set a five minute shutdown block

Put a recurring calendar block at the end of your day, for example 5:15 to 5:20 in the afternoon. In that block, look at what you finished, what is unfinished, and what is coming tomorrow. Then write the six.

Write tasks you can finish

"Work on the report" is not a task. "Draft sections two and three of the Q4 report" is. Each item should be something you could tick off in a single sitting of 30 minutes to two hours. If an item is bigger than that, write the first concrete chunk.

Put the hard one first

Rank by importance, not by ease. Very often this means your most demanding piece of work lands in the first position, which overlaps nicely with the idea behind the eat the frog method. The difference is that Ivy Lee gives you the next five steps as well, so finishing the hard task does not leave you wondering what comes next.

Protect the list from small stuff

Replying to messages, approving a timesheet or booking a room should not take a place on the list. Handle tasks that take under two minutes as they come up, which is where the two-minute rule earns its keep, or in a batch at lunch. They do not belong among the six.

Where the strict version breaks down

The orthodox advice is to never touch task two until task one is completely done. I think that rule is worth bending, and here is why.

Many modern tasks have waiting time built in. You send a draft for review and cannot continue until a colleague replies. You start a data export that takes 40 minutes. Sitting idle out of loyalty to the method is not productive. In those cases, move to task two, then return to task one as soon as it is unblocked. The rule that matters is not "never switch", it is "never switch because the next task is easier".

The number six is also not sacred. If your days are heavy with meetings, four honest tasks beats six optimistic ones that roll over every night. Start with six, and if more than two items keep carrying over for a week, drop to four or five. A list you finish builds confidence. A list you never finish teaches you to ignore it.

A sample day

Here is a real list from a project manager I worked with, written at 5:15 the evening before:

1. Finish the vendor comparison and send a recommendation to Dana.
2. Rewrite the project timeline after the scope change.
3. Prepare three questions for Thursday's client call.
4. Review the budget sheet from finance.
5. Draft the onboarding note for the new contractor.
6. Clear the shared drive folder for the closed project.

She finished the first four and half of the fifth. The fifth and sixth moved to the next day's list, with a new item added above them. That is a normal, successful day under this method. The point is never to finish all six. It is to make sure the top items get done.

Common mistakes

• Writing the list in the morning instead of the night before, which brings back the decision fatigue you were trying to remove.
• Filling the six places with routine tasks you would do anyway.
• Letting the same item sit at number six for a week. If it never moves up, it either needs breaking down or it does not matter.
• Keeping a second, longer list "just in case" and working from that instead.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the Ivy Lee method use six tasks?

Six is enough to fill a productive day while still forcing you to leave things out. Lee chose it as a practical limit, not a scientific one. Many people do better with four or five on meeting heavy days.

Can the Ivy Lee method work with a digital to-do app?

Yes, as long as you keep the limit and the order. Create a separate list or tag for tomorrow's six and hide everything else while you work. Paper still works better for many people because it cannot grow.

What happens to tasks that never make the top six?

They either wait until they become important or quietly drop off. That is part of the point. Review the leftover pile once a week and delete anything that has stopped mattering.