It’s simple, yet so profound
Basically, you’re just planning out your day in advance and then following the plan. Many people just refer to this as a “to do” list, but that’s not accurate. A “to do” list is a list of general things that you need to do. That’s not what this is. This is a “PRIORITIZED” list of things that need to get done THE NEXT DAY.
The key rule, as he told Schwab, was to only have six items. Never have more than six items on your list. I don’t know the reasoning behind why he felt six was the magic number, but his method had a very strict rule allowing only six prioritized items on each day’s list.
At the end of the three-month period, Charles Schwab was so impressed by the results that he wrote Lee a $25,000 check. That’s the equivalent of about $400,000+ in today’s money! That’s a lot of money for just spending 15 minutes with each of his executives.
Charles Schwab was not a man to spend money loosely, so he must have been 100% convinced that this method truly increased his company’s productivity and bottom line.
This simple strategy is still very popular and is now called the Ivy Lee Method or Ivy Lee Strategy. Just search for “Ivy Lee” on Google and you’ll see how popular it is. You’ll also find more information on Lee and the variations to his method, that people have come up with over the years.
Just remember…this strategy, as well as all the other strategies we talk about, will only work if you implement it!
One thing I want you to notice about this strategy as well as other strategies is that they require a list. That’s why I said at the beginning of this article that after all my research, I found that all strategies require, in some way, shape, or form, a list.
At the beginning I said there were two types of lists, a To Do list and an Exclusion list. The above strategy is based around a to do list. In all my research I’ve also found that the exclusion list is just as important as the to do list. So, what is an exclusion list?
