Why Your To-Do List is Making You Miserable (And the 100-Year-Old Trick to Fix It)

The Client Meeting That Broke Me

I’ll never forget the day I blanked mid-pitch. There I was, in a sleek boardroom with a big exec, my laptop flashing reminders: “Finalize proposal!” “Prep Q4 metrics!” “Call mom!!” My mind went static. I stammered, excused myself, and locked myself in a bathroom stall, clutching my $150 planner like a life raft.

That’s when I realised: I was selling “growth strategies” while drowning in my own chaos. My clients? They weren’t faring better. A startup CEO cried during a 1:1 because her team missed a launch again. A CFO confessed he hadn’t slept through the night in months, haunted by Asana notifications.

We were all chasing productivity, but the harder we sprinted, the further behind we fell.

The Productivity Myth Smart Leaders Believe (And Why It’s Wrong)

For years, I preached the gospel of “more”: more tools, more systems, more hustle. My clients bought it—until their teams rebelled.

The SaaS founder who spent $50k/year on project software… only to watch his CTO quit over “Jira-induced panic attacks.”

The marketing VP whose team spent 20 hours/week updating Trello, not creating campaigns.

Myself, juggling 12 clients, 47 tabs, and a birthday party, collapsing into burnout.

Then I stumbled on a yellowed 1980s journal in a thrift store. Inside was a 4-step method from Ivy Lee, the man who taught Rockefeller how to scale. It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t AI-driven. But it worked too well to ignore.

The $400,000 Lesson Every Leader Missed

In 1918, Charles Schwab—then the world’s highest-paid executive—handed efficiency consultant Ivy Lee a challenge: “Show me how to get more done without burning out my team.”

Lee’s 4-sentence reply earned him a check worth $400,000 today. For a century, his method stayed buried under layers of SaaS tools and “agile frameworks.” But today, forward-thinking CEOs are reviving it to combat decision fatigue, team burnout, and “productivity theater.”

The Ivy Lee Method:

1. Daily, list 6 tasks. Only 6.
2. Rank them by true impact (not urgency).
3. Do Task 1 first. No email, no calls, no distractions.
4. Repeat.

My Skepticism: “Six tasks? I have 600!” But I tested it during my worst week:

Day 1: My list included “Save the medical hospital account” (Task 1) and “Reschedule dentist” (Task 6).

By noon, I’d salvaged the client relationship.

By Friday, I’d cleared a 4-month backlog and made time for hiking which I love, but was unable to do for months.

Clients noticed. One said, “You’re… calmer. What’s your secret?”

How This Unsexy Strategy Crushes Modern Tools

Client Case Study: From Burnout to 60% Revenue Growth

A fintech CEO (let’s call her Maya) was drowning in “urgent” fires. Her team worked nights, yet growth stalled. We:

1. Trashed her 27-tool stack. Replaced it with one shared Google Doc (6 tasks/person/day).
2. Banned meetings on Mondays. “Deep work only.”
3. Trained her to say “no” to anything outside her Top 6. To be transparent - for her we reserved one more spot for a super-super urgent task which can appear, but never had.

Results in 100 Days:

• Revenue up 60%.

• Employee retention reached 80% (a huge win for that particular company).

• Maya took her first vacation in 3 years.

“Turns out, less really is more,” she laughed.

Objections I Hear (And How to Gut-Check Them)

“But I have 100 priorities!” → So did Rockefeller. Your brain can’t handle 100. Six forces ruthless focus.

“What if emergencies happen?” → Add a 7th line only for true crises (e.g., “server down,” not “Karen’s PDF request”).

“My team needs complexity!” → Lie. A 2023 Stanford study found simplicity drives 72% faster execution.

Your 3-Step Rebellion Starts Tonight

1. Tonight, 9 PM: Grab paper. Write 6 tomorrow-tasks. Kill vagueness: ? “Work on presentation” → ? “Draft slides 1-3: Customer ROI data.”
2. Rank them like your career depends on it (because it does).
3. Tomorrow: Annihilate Task 1 first. No exceptions.

Why This Works for Leaders:

• Decision fatigue dies. Your brain already chose what matters.

• Guilt evaporates. Unfinished tasks? They weren’t Top 6.

• Creativity surges. Clarity = mental space for real strategy.

Your team is begging for simplicity. They’re exhausted by your Monday standups, your Asana hierarchies, your “urgent” flags. What they need isn’t another tool—it’s permission to focus.

Your Move, Strategist

In 72 hours, you’ll either:

A) Be halfway through Task 4, baffled by how much you’ve done.

B) Still be drowning in apps designed to profit from your chaos.

The Ivy Lee Method isn’t a trick. It’s a lifeline.

Forward this to your most overwhelmed colleague with: “Let’s try the 6-task rule. I’ll go first.”