The Daily Big 3: Your Key to Sanity

Long lists create stress and scattered effort. In this episode, Marissa Hyatt and Joel Miller show how the Daily Big 3 turns overwhelm into progress. You’ll learn a practical, repeatable way to choose three high-impact tasks each day—grounded in your Weekly and Quarterly Big 3—so you can be productive and peaceful. 

Key Takeaways

• Ditch the Club. The numbers say it all: everyone is stressed by their to-do list. But you don’t have to be a statistic.
• Stop the Crazy. Endless tasks split your focus and spike stress. Fewer, bigger priorities win.
• Process Your Priorities.  Brain dump everything → review Quarterly + Weekly Big 3 → review calendar/energy → choose three realistic, high-leverage tasks.
• Break Free of Urgency. Ask, “Will someone notice today if this isn’t done?” and “If nothing else happens, what three things matter most?”
• Choose the Path to Peace. Finishing strong comes from focusing small—consistently.

Watch on YouTube at:  https://youtu.be/qEOn2Rk9MKU


This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

Creators and Guests

Host

Joel Miller

Originally from Sacramento, Joel is the Chief Content Officer at Full Focus. He is committed to helping people cut through distractions, focus on what matters most, and live fully present. When he's not savoring moments with his wife, Megan, and their five kids, he's probably reading or writing. He enjoys reviewing novels, listening to jazz, and musing about economics—and his latest book, The Idea Machine, is available for order now.

Host

Marissa Hyatt

Born and raised south of Nashville, Marissa is the Chief Marketing Officer at Full Focus. She is super passionate about helping people get outside their comfort zones, find their own power, and achieve their dreams. In her free time, she enjoys cooking for friends, baking sourdough bread, and hiking. She geeks out on natural wellness, skincare, personal growth, gardening, and traveling.

What is Focus on This?

Start loving Mondays! Join Marissa & Joel each week for practical strategies, weekly rhythms, and honest insights to help you slow down, show up, and live intentionally. Based on the proven Full Focus methods used in the Full Focus Planner™, each episode offers habits, mindset shifts, and real support so you can quiet the noise, follow through, and build a life that feels good to live. Ready to focus on what really matters?

[00:00:00] Marissa: What if doing less? Could make you feel calmer and help you accomplish more? Well, let's see why. Setting just three daily priorities might be your key to sanity.
[00:00:18] Welcome to Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the internet. I'm Marissa Hyatt.
[00:00:24] Joel: And I'm Joel Miller.
[00:00:25] Marissa: This is where we remind you of. Something that you already know. It's not about getting more things done, it's about getting the right things done,
[00:00:33] Joel: both in work and in life. And today we're unpacking the magic of the daily big three and why narrowing your focus can actually expand your results.
[00:00:44] Marissa: This is one of my favorite topics because I hear constantly from friends and acquaintances that there's always more to do. And honestly, from our double win coaching clients, I think this is one of the biggest sticking points for them is there's. Always more to do and accomplish in one day than we even have time or attention to be able to accomplish, which feels like a really impossible choice.
[00:01:10] Every single day we're asking the question, what can I feasibly get done today? And we feel that constant pressure to do more than we actually have the ability.
[00:01:21] Joel: Totally. My mind always goes to that line from the Lord of the Rings, where Bilbo Baggins says that he feels like butter scraped over too much bread.
[00:01:29] You know, it's just like there's just not enough of me to go around. That's true for I think all of us. You know, we all have this tendency to be very ambitious, and in that ambition we bite off more than we can chew and. I think that's pretty normal. On top of that, when you are, you know, somebody that gets a lot of stuff done, people give you more stuff to get done.
[00:01:53] So,
[00:01:54] Marissa: yeah,
[00:01:54] Joel: like they just assume you have the capacity and until you squeak and say no, like you can't handle it anymore, they're gonna keep giving you stuff. So whether it's self-imposed or other imposed, we tend to just accumulate too much to do.
[00:02:07] Marissa: Especially if you are a high achiever, which we know that's our community.
[00:02:12] These are the people that we tend to hang out with. Right. Joel? Um, here especially on the podcast, are people who are going to be accomplishing a lot day to day and like you're talking about. It can feel like this constant struggle where you know you wanna cram in more because you're able to, you know, you're a high capacity person, you can do a lot of things, and yet there comes a point where it's just not serving you or the outcomes you're trying to accomplish and can feel actually really exhausting and discouraging at the end of the day.
[00:02:42] When you just have this whole planner full of days, or you know, notebook full of days where you have barely any check marks, it feels discouraging. It feels frustrating, and you feel like you're constantly asking, am I making any progress?
[00:02:56] Joel: Yeah, totally. Let's quantify this for a second. I have a pop quiz for you.
[00:03:00] I don't know if you're ready for this. I dunno if I'm, nobody's ready for a pop quiz, that's why it's a pop quiz. This is according to one survey I just read. 60% of respondents said they have. More than how many personal and work-related tasks every week. How many does this percentage 60% of people have on their list every week?
[00:03:21] Marissa: Well, according to the people that I'm talking to, it's gotta be in the double digits.
[00:03:27] Joel: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:27] Marissa: I would say. 50.
[00:03:29] Joel: It turns out the number is 60. So you were close, but it's even worse than you imagined. Worse than you feared. And wow, that's not the end of it. That was 60% of the audience. Another 15% have actually more than 100.
[00:03:44] Marissa: Oh my, my gosh. If you were to
[00:03:44] Joel: break those two numbers down for, you know, over the course of a day 60 personal and work related tasks, every week is like 12 every day. And. If you're talking about a hundred, that's 20 or more than a hundred. That's more, wow. So that's so many.
[00:04:00] Marissa: One of the things that I hear, or questions that I get from our customers that I see in our full focus planner community or just online, is we need more lines for our task list.
[00:04:11] Yes, we need more ability to put more tasks down, and this is really intentional on our part, Joel. We have intentionally designed the full focus planner to not just have an endless amount of lines for you to add an endless amount of tasks. Every single day because we know you are not gonna be able to accomplish them.
[00:04:31] It's a recipe for disaster. And this goes to prove it. It's, there's always more to do. Totally. There's never going to be enough lines. You know, I am the kind of person, and I've heard a lot of our community does this too, where you kind of. Have a continual task list of things you're putting off or thinking about right.
[00:04:50] In their phones. Right. And so you have this note in your phone with all these tasks. And I know that when I talk to people, especially when they're new into our world, that list is so long and they ask, they always ask the question, how do I translate this into my planner? Yeah. How do I take all of these 100 things that I'm supposed to be getting done this week and translate them?
[00:05:12] And really the answer is not to just directly translate those. We wanna be, um, mindful and thoughtful about those. But this just goes to show there's never gonna be enough time, never enough lines in your planner, never enough energy, never enough focus to get all the things done that we're trying to accomplish.
[00:05:29] But that doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice your results by any means.
[00:05:32] Joel: Well. Just to go ahead and underscore the pain here for a minute, just like press into the bruise a tiny bit.
[00:05:39] Marissa: Great.
[00:05:40] Joel: A LinkedIn survey found that only 11% of workers actually finished their to-do list each day.
[00:05:46] Marissa: Oh my gosh.
[00:05:47] Joel: Just 11%.
[00:05:48] And this is kind of a famous study done by the I Doneness company, but their analysis showed that 41% of to-dos are never done. Like as in we write them down that big list. Like we write it down and it just goes there to die. Like it doesn't actually ever happen.
[00:06:05] Marissa: Yeah. It's a graveyard of
[00:06:06] Joel: tasks.
[00:06:07] Marissa: Yeah. It's really not surprising to me at all that this would be true.
[00:06:10] This feels intuitively true to me. Yeah. That based on a lot of conversations, based on the, the things that we know our community struggles with and you know, if we think about our community is full of high achieving professionals. That's what we know. These are people who have a lot to get done and we're not just talking about work.
[00:06:31] I think that's important to kind of underscore here totally, that your life is full of a lot of things beyond just work. And so while we're, you know, gonna focus on work and talk about that, this doesn't just mean we're talking about work task. This could mean anything related to your personal life is also going on this list and.
[00:06:53] That feels very daunting and very overwhelming and you know, hit the brakes before you even hit the gas. 'cause how are you even gonna get it done?
[00:07:01] Joel: What I'm even hearing in your voice is echoed in another number. Well, let's go ahead and mention this.
[00:07:06] Marissa: Okay. Just.
[00:07:09] Joel: 90% of respondents to the first survey I mentioned, 90% of respondents said this kind of overcommitment that they had, leaves them feeling either moderately, highly or very highly stressed.
[00:07:22] Yeah, and so like we're just walking around with like a tornado in our backpack trying to like figure out how to get it all quelled down and, and we can't, there's just too much to manage and all of that too. Muchness is cognitively, emotionally, psychologically, it's just, it's a burden.
[00:07:43] Marissa: Yeah, that's really sobering to think about that.
[00:07:47] Our task list is creating massive amounts of stress, and we actually have control over this, which is yes, which is hopeful and encouraging that it doesn't have to stay this way. Where we look at this list, whether that's a note on your phone or in your planner or on a legal pad, and you look at that and you immediately feel somewhere between moderately to very highly stressed.
[00:08:09] You know, your blood pressure is raising, right? Just by looking at the amount of things that you're supposed to do. Your Apple Watch is sending
[00:08:16] Joel: you alerts, you know, like your heart rate is problematic.
[00:08:18] Marissa: Pay attention, you know, things are out of the the norm here. And I think it's really sobering to realize there is always gonna be more to do.
[00:08:30] Not everything has to be done today and. We've got to get our understanding of what's reasonable and what's feasible. Right. Sized. Totally. Because we clearly are living in some kind of a delusional planet thinking that we can accomplish a hundred things in any given week. Right. Which is wild. And then 41% of those things are sitting there, never gonna get done in the first
[00:08:55] Joel: place.
[00:08:55] Ever, ever, ever.
[00:08:56] Marissa: Ooh, yeah. That's a really, really sobering.
[00:08:59] Joel: Well, okay, so let's actually think about this for a second. If. A bunch of that stuff is never gonna get done, and you might, well, you might as well acknowledge that on the front end. If. A lot of that stuff is never gonna get done. As you're thinking about transferring your list, let's just say that that's an exercise you could do in order to, to do this thing that I'm getting ready to mention.
[00:09:20] Shouldn't you go ahead and apply some critical thinking to what you might actually accomplish? What really needs to be done, what doesn't need to be done, right? And actually start like editing that list.
[00:09:31] Marissa: There's gotta be a priority to these things. All tasks are not created equal, right? There are certain things that you can intentionally push out.
[00:09:39] That you don't need to have that constantly sitting there asking for your mental attention. When it actually doesn't have to happen right now. Joel, before we started this episode, I was actually setting my daily big three. Mm-hmm. And I was referring back to yesterday and what I did or didn't do yesterday was a really busy day.
[00:09:58] I was in meetings most of the day and I. Fell prey to exactly what we're talking about. I added way too many things to my list trying to get those done. And when I look back, it's like, of course there was, there was literally not enough time on my calendar, like empty space for me to even execute these things.
[00:10:19] I don't know what I was thinking here, but if I had just in that moment said, Hey, these actually aren't critical to get done today. I can get these done later this week, or even honestly next week. I think I would've felt much less stressed throughout the day.
[00:10:34] Joel: I think there's a part of us that we feel the stress of all this stuff that we know needs to get done, and there is like a, there is a like a reset on the stress level when you just get it written down.
[00:10:45] Like you feel better the minute you make a list because the minute you make a list, it feels like, all right, it's all contained. At least I know what it is. I've got some boundaries on this thing. But if that list somehow is communicating to you, and you need to get this all done today. Then you've just ramped up the stress again because there's no way to get it all done.
[00:11:03] Marissa: So we've gotta make sure that we're understanding what really is happening. I had a, a conversation with one of our team members yesterday for our one-on-one meeting that we have on a regular basis, and. He was talking about how this time of year tends to be higher stress. There's more things going on for most of us.
[00:11:23] There's just a lot to do.
[00:11:26] Joel: Tease. We have an episode coming up on that very topic.
[00:11:29] Marissa: We do, yeah.
[00:11:30] Joel: Yes,
[00:11:30] Marissa: we, we actually are gonna talk about this more in depth 'cause it's so important. But his goal over the next 90 days is to figure out how to do what he needs to do for his job while maintaining a high level of peace.
[00:11:46] Joel: Well, I actually think of the goal setting framework called an OKR. Yeah. You know, like an objective with a key result. And if you have this objective and one of your key results is peace. Like that's a great way of thinking about what he's doing there. He's saying, I'll only consider this a success if I'm also having peace while I'm achieving this goal.
[00:12:08] Marissa: Totally. Well, and I think that we put so much unnecessary pressure on ourselves to accomplish everything we're trying to do. We feel like we have this high sense of urgency that everything is supposed to get done right now, today or this week, and we're so unreasonable. And looking at our calendars and going, this is what can actually be done.
[00:12:31] And what I told him yesterday and I think is helpful for all of us to hear is that for most of us not doing that one thing, whether it's responding to that email or finishing that content, making that phone call, whatever it may be. Is not so consequential that somebody is going to bleed out on the table.
[00:12:54] Joel: Yeah. This is not surgery. This
[00:12:56] Marissa: is, this is not surgery for most of us. I mean, unless you're a surgeon. Like this is not the reality for the majority of us. And I think it's helpful because I think that we feel that way and we usually feel like the person who would bleed out on the table is us.
[00:13:10] Joel: Like it's existentially risky not to do these things.
[00:13:12] Marissa: Yes. And I think that what I would, would be willing to say is. Often what ends up happening is the very thing we're trying to avoid, we set ourselves up for total failure. We add all, you know, 160 to 100 tasks on our list in any given week expecting that we're gonna do that. And what ends up happening is we end up bleeding out on the table trying.
[00:13:34] Joel: Right?
[00:13:35] Marissa: And the truth is we don't need to do that. We don't have to compromise on the results. Right. In any way, shape, or form. This doesn't mean that we're just saying, okay, well we're gonna settle for less and you know, we're gonna do kind of just the bare minimum here. That's not at all what we're saying.
[00:13:51] We're saying you can still get the results that you're after and also maintain a healthy dose of peace at the same time.
[00:13:58] Joel: Let's pivot and chat a little bit about why like this even makes sense, because it's somewhat counterintuitive. We think I have to get done all this stuff and we're saying a. You can't,
[00:14:12] Marissa: right?
[00:14:12] Joel: B. No, you don't. It's the no, you don't part where people are like gonna immediately react. You know? They're gonna be like, what do you mean I don't have to do all this stuff? Of course I have to do all this. Yeah. But we know that that's not true and there's actually. Some rather interesting research and there's some interesting historical anecdotes and others that kind of help us understand why.
[00:14:33] The one that I've been thinking about recently is the story of Ivy Lee who went to Charles Schwab and said, Hey, I can save you gobs of money in your business. And Schwab was like. Okay, tell me more. And he said, basically, I just wanna work with your executives and if at the end of this period, this experimental period you like the results, then feel free to write me a big check.
[00:14:55] Um, but otherwise I'm, this is like purely speculative on my part. Schwab was like, great. So he goes to work with these executives and basically the plan was this. Every day he had them write down six things that they were going to accomplish, no more than six. And out of those six things, he wanted them to, he would do it at, they would do it at the end of the prior day.
[00:15:17] So the next day they would start on those six things and they would like monotask. They would just do one at a time, and whatever was left over would get punted to the next day. Where they could only then add whatever the number was, up to six, and the end result was that at the end of this period, this was so successful in terms of keeping these executives focused and keeping them productive, that Schwab wrote this guy a check for the equivalent in today's dollars of like $400,000.
[00:15:46] Marissa: Wow.
[00:15:47] Joel: Hugely beneficial to take these guys that are busy doing all this stuff and say, no, no, no, no, no. Let's just narrow it down. And not only will you narrow it down, you're gonna be ruthlessly committed to finishing these, this list and whatever you do, you're gonna stay single-minded on the task too.
[00:16:04] You're not gonna bounce between tasks because what we know is what's happening with these big lists is we're not. Just doing one thing at a time. We're bouncing all over the place, which just means we have divided focus. And so Ivy Lee helped get these guys like narrowed down to just doing one thing at a time and then also keeping their focus really tight.
[00:16:26] But we've decided at full focus is like you can tighten it even more. And that is three things, but that's like the root of where that's coming from is this idea that. Your focus is everywhere. And if it's everywhere, you're never gonna be able to accomplish the things that you want to get done.
[00:16:41] Marissa: Well, and I think that what, what ends up happening often for most of us, is we look at that list and we feel an immediate sense of overwhelm.
[00:16:50] Yeah. You know, we call this defeated Yeah. Decision fatigue. Yeah. It's like, I don't know where to start. And it feels overwhelming. It feels exhausting. We end up over time, the more decisions that we're constantly having to make, the worse that it gets for us. And so if we're able to keep those decisions to a really small number three, like, okay, at the beginning of my day, I just set the three things that I'm looking for.
[00:17:17] I don't have to worry about decision fatigue, right? Setting in, I don't have to continue asking myself what next, all day long, right? It's like, I know the next thing that I do after this is this next thing. Because I've got it written in a plan. And, um, I think that the more that we can reduce that decision fatigue, the more we can reduce the mental overwhelm that ends up happening as we're trying to process and trying to figure out.
[00:17:42] And then if we're able to do that, that's gonna help motivation, help our momentum sustain as we continue knocking those three things off the list.
[00:17:51] Joel: Totally. Well, if you go back to that statistic of 90% of respondents saying that their sense of overcommitment leaves them feeling stressed. That's where a lot of it's coming from.
[00:18:00] It's just like, right, you can't get it all done and it's staring back at you the whole time. You look at that list, it's like everything on that list is saying, you'll never finish me. You know? Yeah. And of course you feel stressed, but the minute you start weeding it out and you start, uh, narrowing it down, all of a sudden you're able to look at three things on your list today and say.
[00:18:18] Yeah, I can do that and I can do that, and I can do that. And every one of 'em is high leverage. Yeah. Every one of them matters. Every one of 'em will move the ball down the field.
[00:18:26] Marissa: Yeah. So if, if you're listening and you're feeling what we're talking about, this high level of overwhelm where you feel stressed, you think about what you have to do, your heart rate goes up.
[00:18:36] It just feels like you don't know where to start, what to do first, how to prioritize. My encouragement is slow down, take a deep breath. Do what Joel is talking about. Just brain dump what you need to brain dump out, and then we're gonna walk you through how to really implement the daily big three into your day-to-day life.
[00:18:58] And through that process, you're gonna find immense amount of peace. This really is the path to peace. I cannot even stress that enough. What we're talking about that most people experience is the exact opposite of that. Yeah. And we've got a really, really simple solution that anybody. At any level can immediately today go implement.
[00:19:33] So Joel, let's talk about what this specifically looks like. How do we take this crazy to-do list and turn it into a daily big three?
[00:19:42] Joel: I would look at the big list and I would just say. What do I need to do in order to move my goals forward? For instance, you can think about your personal goals. You could definitely think about your professional goals.
[00:19:53] What do I need to do today to move those forward? Mm-hmm. Then you also want to ask, what is it on that list? That depends mostly on me. So if it's the kind of thing that. I'm gonna be contributing 10% to, it may not need to live on my list in the same way as something that I'm contributing 90% to.
[00:20:11] Marissa: Right.
[00:20:12] Joel: So if it's mostly on me, then I need to take like as much responsibility for that as I possibly can and just like get it done.
[00:20:18] And so I, that should be a candidate also. And then it also has to be something that can fit realistically within your time and your energy limits. Yeah, there are. 168 hours in a week and you're gonna be sleeping for a bunch of them. Hopefully. Yeah. You know, you're gonna be hanging out with friends and family.
[00:20:35] You're gonna be doing all kinds of other things. You only have so many hours in a week to work. I know that we've. We think that we can do way more than we actually can fit into the hours, but, or even way more than we can fit into our energy balance. Right. You know, like let's say you hit the day running, but by 2:00 PM you're lagging.
[00:20:52] Well there's a reason like everybody's gonna be lagging around 2:00 PM Right. And you probably need to do some low leverage work there. Not assume that you can knock out yet another major important project. Yeah. 'cause it's probably not gonna happen.
[00:21:04] Marissa: As you're thinking through your list and what to pick for today.
[00:21:10] Look at your calendar. Oh yeah. I know this is simple, but I did this yesterday where I didn't do that, and the three things that I had, one of them was literally not gonna get done purely because there was no space in my day to do the thing. Had I looked at my calendar and really asked the question, is it possible for me to accomplish this based on what else is already on my calendar?
[00:21:35] Yeah. I would've not put that thing on my daily Big three. Yeah. But I made the mistake, you know, we're not immune. Even us here at Full Focus, we're not immune to this. It's still a challenge that we're working through each day, and when we forget to ask that question, this is where I see most people go wrong.
[00:21:53] Because it's like they don't look at their list. They just purely think, okay, I need to get these things done today. And they're not considering what's already on their calendar, what other commitments they have, and there's just literally no way that they could have accomplished those things. Yeah. So really ask this question on the front end as you're filtering, as you're making the decisions of which of the three things do I wanna add?
[00:22:14] And if you have a day that is full of meetings or full of things that you're having to attend. Maybe those need to be part of your big three. Those items may be important enough to put as part of your daily big three. For instance, Joel, I think you and I both have this podcast recording. As one of our daily big threes.
[00:22:37] Joel: My number one.
[00:22:38] Marissa: Yeah, same.
[00:22:39] Joel: And since today, this is gonna take a big hunk of the day. I only have a big two today. Yeah. Because I know that there's really only time in the, in the workday after this recording to accomplish one other thing.
[00:22:50] Marissa: And honestly, energy, I mean, the truth is this kind of work, if you're in a presenting mode, takes a different level of energy than if you're just sitting by yourself.
[00:22:58] Writing or something, right? Yeah. Or if you're doing, like for me, I do a lot of reviews of the team's work, so I'm reviewing emails, sales page, copy, design, you name it. That takes a really different level of my energy. Yeah. Than doing this type of work does, and so I need to account for that energy output when I think about the rest of the time today and what I'm feasibly able to accomplish.
[00:23:21] I wanna make sure I'm not only accounting for anything else that's on my calendar, but also my energy. And so I know if we're spending three hours in a podcast recording today, which I think is what we've got scheduled, yeah, that my energy output for the next half of the day is gonna be probably far less than on a normal.
[00:23:38] Joel: Tuesday, if this were a per, if there were a personal trainer here right now overlooking this moment, they would be like, that's it. We want you to leave it all, you know, all on the field. Right. Give it all.
[00:23:48] Marissa: Yeah.
[00:23:48] Joel: But that means whatever it is you're doing, if you, if you do have a moment like that in your workday, well you are gonna be drained.
[00:23:53] You're not gonna be able to do other things at the same level.
[00:23:55] Marissa: Exactly.
[00:23:55] Joel: I wanna stand in the position of the listener for a second and just ask a question. 'cause this is a question that we often hear and. I can just hear people asking it, and so I'm just gonna go ahead and ask it for them and listener.
[00:24:07] You're welcome. Okay. So the question is this, how do I pick three things when everything feels urgent? Mm.
[00:24:15] Marissa: How many times have we asked ourselves this question too? Totally. I think this is so common because you're right, everything does feel urgent. What I was talking about that we have this fear that if we don't do this thing, somebody's gonna bleed out on the table.
[00:24:28] So first of all, let's take that option off of the table, literally, because we most,
[00:24:32] Joel: mostly nobody's gonna be dying.
[00:24:33] Marissa: Mostly nobody's gonna be dying. Yeah. So, um, let's kind of rightsize the risk factor here if we don't do something, A couple of things that I usually coach our clients to. First of all, really asking the question, does this have to get done today?
[00:24:48] Like, is this mission critical today? Is, and, and you can ask this a little bit differently to say, is somebody waiting on me? Mm-hmm. For this today? Mm-hmm. That's usually how I know. Is it really urgent that if I don't do this, somebody's gonna come knocking on my door and saying, Hey, did you finish that thing?
[00:25:03] Yeah. Or did you get that done right? And if the answer is no, nobody's gonna come to me like I still have a couple of days or even a week until that person who's waiting on me is gonna come knocking on my door, then I'm not gonna probably add that to my daily big three today. If I have other, you can safely defer
[00:25:20] Joel: it.
[00:25:20] Marissa: Yes, if I have other urgent items that I know people are gonna come knocking on my door. So that's kind of my first filter is usually figuring out, will anybody notice if I don't do this today? And when I look at my daily big three, every single one of those things, yes, somebody's gonna notice if I don't do those things.
[00:25:38] So I've gotta get those done today. Secondly, I think this is where we can look at our weekly big three. To specifically figure out is this critical for me to do now to make progress on that weekly big three? So Joel, do you wanna kind of distinguish the difference between a weekly big three and a daily big three?
[00:25:58] For everybody who's listening to make sure they understand how these things relate and how they're different.
[00:26:03] Joel: The easiest way to imagine this is to say, really to look at actually another big three on top of the weekly. Mm-hmm. And that is the quarterly. So let's say that there are several goals that you're working to accomplish over the course of a quarter.
[00:26:16] Uh, we would say ideally no more than three and, and. Truthfully, it would be even preferable if you did fewer for the sake of focus. But let's say you have three. The only way those three goals are actually gonna get accomplished over the course of that quarter is if you make effort towards them, right?
[00:26:30] If you like do things to make them happen. And that means you have to like get it written down and that. Is what your weekly big three is for. So basically your weekly big three is a way for you to say, all right, what is it that I really want to get done in my life? And I'm gonna, I'm taking a stand for this thing.
[00:26:49] Whatever this thing happens to be, this goal, and I'm going to, I'm gonna make sure that I'm making progress on it every week. And so I'm writing one, one step. I might take towards that goal as one of my weekly big three. It becomes a priority. Yeah. There's other things in my life that also matter, you know, like there's stuff that I want to get done, but there's stuff everyone else wants me to get done, especially, you know, my workplace.
[00:27:10] And so I've got work stuff that might also need to go onto that weekly big three. So what I'm trying to do is ultimately say I'm going to track three very high level priorities over the course of this week. There were gonna be a mix of personal and professional. And in that mix of personal and professional, I'm gonna have stuff I have to do every day in order to accomplish that, or I'm gonna have to fit it in over the course of these five available workday to get it done.
[00:27:37] And so those become your daily big three. So that's kind of the relationship between a quarterly big three, a weekly big three, and a daily big three. Yeah. You've got like your long term target, you've got these kind of short term. The weeks, the short term priorities where you're saying, I'm gonna make progress on this part of this thing this week, this way, and then there's the stuff that you do every day in order to get that done
[00:27:58] Marissa: well.
[00:27:58] And I think a, a really simple way to filter and to figure out if things should really be on your daily big three is to ask the question, if nothing else got accomplished today. Mm, what are the three most important things? I need to do today. Two. Yeah, that's so good. Make progress on my weekly big three or my quarterly big three, or my other, you know, big priorities in my life right now.
[00:28:21] And I feel like that really helps us to determine what's the most important thing, because if we go in with the end of mind that we know we can't do everything. Then that's just gonna immediately take things off the table. And so knowing that on the front end is helpful because then we can ask the question.
[00:28:38] Well then with that in mind, mm-hmm. What are the three most important things? If nothing else got done today, what are the three most important things? And usually that's a pretty good filter. And then obviously we do have space in our full focus planner for you to put other tasks. Yeah. And so those are the things that you wanna get to later or after you've accomplished your big three as time allows or that's usually, those other tasks are usually very small.
[00:29:05] Little quick things like, Hey, I need to text this person and remind them that, or, I need to deliver this document to so-and-so, or whatever. But it's not necessarily rising to that level of a daily big three. Yeah. So keep that in mind as you're, as you're going through and filtering your task list into your daily big three each day, we wanna make sure we're connecting it back to those weekly priorities.
[00:29:28] And then back to your quarterly goals. Yeah, that's the aim is that these things are connecting back. And my last tip is just to make sure that you're accounting for your entire life, so making sure that you're thinking about your personal life too. It's easy to default only to work in this context, and sometimes there's personal tasks that have to get done, and they're sometimes so important that they need to rise to that daily big three or weekly big three as well.
[00:29:52] Joel: So. We have in every episode a tool or a tip of the week. What I'm suggesting is definitely our tool and tip of the week. It's the big three. It's the daily big three. Yeah. This is the thing that's gonna help you through it. And just to kind of formalize what I'm hearing you say, what we've said in terms of the process, basically you're gonna review your quarterly big three.
[00:30:14] You're gonna review your weekly big three, you're gonna review your calendar, and based on those three reviews, you're gonna pick three things that day. You're gonna accomplish.
[00:30:23] Marissa: Yes,
[00:30:25] Joel: that's it. Easy peasy.
[00:30:27] Marissa: So go do this as soon as you finish this episode. Hopefully you're listening to this on Monday morning.
[00:30:34] Hopefully you've done your weekly preview. You've got that weekly big three identified. So immediately after this, if you haven't already, stop what you're doing and go set your daily big three for today. If nothing else got done today, what are the three most important things that you must get done? By the end of today.
[00:30:50] Joel: And then what do you do with the rest of your list? Just roll it up and smoke it or throw it away or what? Yeah,
[00:30:54] Marissa: that's probably pretty good. Yeah, no, we'll talk about that in another episode of really what to do with all the other things on your list. But if you are able to master this practice every single day, you're gonna.
[00:31:08] Little by little whittle away at that list.
[00:31:11] Joel: Yeah, I love that. And for all the
[00:31:12] Marissa: other things that are just not gonna get done, we'll talk about how to handle those in a future episode.
[00:31:17] Joel: What I really love about this is it goes right back to that. You know, you were talking about solving for peace in the season.
[00:31:26] You know, when you look back at those surveys, the level of stress, this is one of those things that will help reduce that stress. Mm-hmm. So you are solving for peace even while you're being hyper productive.
[00:31:36] Marissa: 100%.
[00:31:39] Joel: Alright. Do you have any final thoughts?
[00:31:40] Marissa: Yeah, I just think the biggest thing to walk away with is understanding that finishing strong, when we think about this year, when we.
[00:31:49] Think about where we're at, these projects we're working on, these goals we're working on. Finishing Strong comes from focusing small. Mm-hmm. So as we think about our lives and our days, three priorities every single day can literally transform everything. It truly is simple. It seems almost too simple, but trust us, we have done the research, we have seen with hundreds of thousands of our customers that this works and we can personally say from our own lives, this works.
[00:32:27] So go ahead, stop what you're doing after this episode and go set your daily big three. Trust me, it will make a massive difference in your day.
[00:32:40] Joel: Thanks for joining us on Focus On This.
[00:32:43] Marissa: This is the most productive podcast on the internet, so please stop what you're doing. If you found this episode helpful, go ahead, text it to one of your friends or one of your colleagues, and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen or at focus on this podcast.com.
[00:32:59] Joel: We'll be here next week where we're going to talk about protecting your priorities before. The holidays hit until then.
[00:33:07] Marissa: Stay focused.
[00:33:09] Joel: Oops.
[00:33:11] Marissa: I think perfect. I think we should keep it
[00:33:13] Joel: done.