 I've studied a lot of time management systems over the years and I've also developed my own. I've shared my time management system with my clients and most of them find it way too complex for their own use and so in this video I'm going to share with you a much simpler time management system that comes from another expert. His name is Mark Forster, M-A-R-K-F-O-R-S-T-E-R, it's a unique spelling of Forster. Anyway, this passage I'm going to share with you comes from the book called Secrets of Productive People and again I shared the system with my clients, they found it really helpful and maybe you'll find it helpful as well. Now I'm going to put the entire passage in the notes of this video but I'm going to read the whole passage to you and intersperse some of my thoughts as I read it to you. So here we go. Here is a very simple time management system which is based on the principles that I've been discussing in this book. Now this is from his book called Secrets of Productive People and I should say about Mark Forster, I've been following his work for a couple of years now and he has published several different time management systems over the years that he has had his audience test and try and he's tweaked various systems as a result and this is his, well the latest one that I found from him that again I shared with my clients, they found helpful so it goes like this. The result is that in spite of its simplicity it is nevertheless immensely powerful. Of all the many systems I have tried out or developed myself over the last 15 years this is the one I find works the best. Do not be misled by its simplicity into thinking that it is too obvious to work. So I really do recommend that you try this one out and let me know, you know comment underneath the video if you like how this works for you because as I said it's worked well for my clients that I've shared it with. Step number one, write out a list of five tasks. Okay, the tasks can be any size large or small but you should be clear in your mind what the definition is of finishing that task with regard to each task. So for larger tasks and projects you will want to define what your target is for the day. So for example if you if your task was to write your book obviously the finished line would be having finished writing your book right but that's typically way too large for finishing in any one day so you would want to write down instead of write a book you want to write down something that's doable for the day. So for example write 1000 words of the book okay or outline the next chapter of the book or stream of consciousness writing for 15 minutes about the book. So make whatever you do write down of your five tasks something that is doable for the day. Okay another example would be write out a list of potential clients to contact right or another item might be to clear backlog of emails to one month ago something like that right. Okay, step number two after step one is to write out the five doable tasks that you could do today. Step number two is to do the tasks in order do the tasks in order don't skip around start from number one and here's the key you don't have to finish the task that you wrote down just do some work on it even if you just do one or two minutes on that task great and then go to the next step so step number three is if you do finish a task you're working on task and you do finish it cross it off the list okay and if you don't finish it don't cross it off step number four if you work on a task but you don't finish it cross it off the list actually so I correct myself as long as you worked on it even if it's one or two minutes you cross it off the list okay and if you didn't totally finish it but you just worked on it you rewrite that item at the at the end of the list so for example if you if the task number one was to write one thousand words in your book and and you go down to five tasks and you start working on number one you start writing your book your words but you only got to writing two hundred words fine cross it off cross up right one thousand tasks on the right one thousand words in the book and then rewrite it at the bottom of the list and now it's item item number six right one thousand words in the book okay okay the next step is to repeat this process until you only have two tasks left on the list and again I will have written the entire process for you in the notes of the video so be sure to look at that the next step is to add once you get to only two tasks left on the list you then add another three tasks and then repeat the steps of doing the task in order you don't have to finish it finish if you finish it though you cross it off but even if you don't finish it just having worked on it for a little bit you cross it off and re-enter it at the bottom of the list so repeat that so in other words you always keep working working working until you have two left and then once you have two left you add three more tasks to the list so you have five again okay now when you start work each day throw away yesterday's list and begin a fresh one now this is interesting what he says because again he's a time management expert that's what he focuses on he's been doing it for four decades now and he has tried out created and he has himself created I know at least five different systems he's created over over the last 15 years but this one seems to work the best and he in his philosophy typically the way that we write out a to-do list we write it out days in advance maybe like oh today I'm going to work on this and you might you might have planned to have worked on this thing days and days ago and he says that by the time the day gets there that to-do list doesn't feel fresh and energizing anymore and maybe it's even outdated and you maybe feel obligated by something you had planned way in advance so this system the genius of this system is to start a new list every single day so that you are in the moment of whatever your energy wherever your energy is wanting to go okay and this might go particularly well for those of you who would like to flow go with the flow right now I'll continue with what he wrote here you can start you can also start a fresh list anytime in the day that you feel a change in circumstances has made your current list inappropriate so basically you should definitely start a new list every day but gosh you come back from lunch you wake up from a nap and you realize you know what I'm gonna my energy is going towards a different direction then start a new list for that okay now here's another key here do not feed your list from another larger list the contents of the list should come fresh just from the top of your mind this is essential if the method is to work properly you can use reminders for specific items you don't want to forget but that is all now I don't know what he means by reminders versus a larger this this is where it kind of gets muddy but that's what you wrote and by the way he has a website so you can go and go to the website and and you know first buy the book so that you can tell him that you bought the book and found this passage in the book and then you can contact him say I have a question about that okay he goes on to say at the end of each day your task list will show what you have actually succeeded in achieving during the day it's a good idea to ask yourself whether what you have done is what you would have wanted to do did you do the right tasks if there were tasks you ought to have done but did not which tasks on the list would you have admitted to make room for the ones you actually wanted to have done you can then apply the answers to your questioning of yourself to what you do the next day so I think the genius of the system is that it helps you be in the moment do what you're energized by but then you also evaluate at the end of each day did I spend my day well and if I should have done something else if I really could have done something else that would have been better use my energy what would that have been right so kind of keep that in mind and then the next day hopefully you'll learn from the previous days questioning right okay this system makes a continuing to read the passenger this system makes us ask ourselves many times a day what should I be doing and as we seen given what he's written in the book thus far asking the same question many times is a very effective technique for creativity for problem solving for learning about yourself and about whatever you're wanting to learn about in the world it goes deeper than that because the questioning is repeated day after day it's kept anchored in reality because it never takes us away from what we are actually capable of achieving in a day the process this process of continuing questioning and in feedback produces very focused action this system also makes use of the little and often technique by encouraging us to work in small bites of action the result is that we are combining the insights received from the questioning with the deeper thought of the maturation process and the elimination of procrastination which little and often brings now he talks about maturation process and I'll just say a little bit if you haven't read the book yet maturation process in his terminology is basically when you work on something a little bit every day your subconscious mind is working on that problem or that project even when your conscious mind is not focused on it so that's called the maturation process so that if you have if you give 10 days to a project and you work on it a little bit every day you will have had the benefit of your subconscious mind having worked on it for all 10 days and your ideas will be more mature hence it's called the maturation process your ideas will be more mature as you work on it in 10 days instead of waiting until day number nine to then start the project and finish it then you only have the benefit of a few hours of the maturation process instead of the 10 days so that in itself could be a huge aha moment for you on how you can be more creative and in fact this is what I do when I record my videos I record my videos having already been thinking about the topics at least three days in advance and then I record the videos and then and then a few days later I will write the blog post associated with the video so I'll have in total maybe a week of maturation process before I write the blog post so continuing on his passage here after you've used the system for a few days you will probably find that you are falling into a natural routine for many of the tasks that you do each day this is a good thing provided that the tasks in the routine are the ones that should be done there shouldn't be a problem with this provided that you review your day in the way that I indicated at the end of the last section so again I recommend that you buy the book if you've been benefiting from what I've been saying all credit goes to Mark Forster by the book it's a couple of bucks on Amazon it's definitely worth it okay all right he goes on to say the system also encourages one further thing and in many ways this is the most important thing of all you may have wondered why the list starts with five tasks and not more or less the answer is that this number of five gives considerate impulse to one's work the system has what I call drawing power that is to say it draws you along and keeps you moving this is a desirable feature of a time management system which is often neglected list of less than five tasks lacks some drawing power there's a tendency to dawdle and get distracted by contrast a cyst a bike by contrast a list longer than five tasks tend to become stale and build up resistance I have found by experience at starting with five and then replenishing when it gets down to two it's just the right number to keep myself moving if you try it out I'm sure you will experience the sense of anticipation that comes from finishing three tasks and then getting them out of the way so that you can replenish the list with three new tasks so that's the end of the passage I will get a copy and paste the entire passage for you in the notes of this video and I again ask you if you benefited from this please go and buy his book I am not an affiliate or any I'm not he doesn't even know who I am actually I just just a fan of his and go buy the book and if you have any questions for him this is another secret that you might not realize but most authors are really happy to get your questions if you have read their book or at least a passage of the book and you have a specific question about a particular part of the book most authors are very happy to respond to you via email or on their social media page or whatever it is and so I think with Mark Forster that's probably the same thing as well so if you have any questions about the system you don't ask me because I didn't come up with it ask Mark Forster and I will of course be a give a link in in the notes of this book not a feel I don't care about making money from this referral so I'm just a non-affiliated link I'll put in and also put a link to his website so you can go and contact him after you bought the book to ask him any questions about the system so I hope this is helpful and do let me know in the comments of this video if you find this helpful and if you try it out and if you find that it's helpful for you I would love to know so I can recommend the system to even more people and if you tweak this if you find a way to tweak the system that has been even more helpful for you to do please share what your tweak is in the notes of in the comments of this video and I'd love to see that all right be well go for it go try it out if it sounds good to you and let me know how it goes