Use 7 Minute Life to Create to-Do Lists Faster
There are so many productivity techniques out there, and many of them can seem quite intense. These might involve converting your to-dos into data, creating complex matrices to prioritize your tasks, or making a list of everything you need to do before assigning a score to it based on a subjective scale. All this takes time. On the other hand, the 7 Minute Life program takes just a few minutes a day and is an effective way to plan what you need to do and stay motivated. Here’s how it works.
What is 7 minutes of life?
This concept comes from Allison Lewis, a productivity guru who founded the 7 Minutes to Live program to help people feel engaged in their work and interests. Her technique can be applied to a variety of things, such as unfinished tasks or achieving specific goals , but it is also broad enough for everyday use.
Essentially, you dedicate seven minutes every morning and evening to making decisions about your day and thinking about what you’ve done and what you need to do tomorrow. The idea is that you should consciously focus on just these two seven-minute intervals, using that time to make conscious choices about how you will spend the rest of your day. The Lewis technique is based on the fact that there are only 1440 minutes in each day, and 14 minutes is only 1% of that number. The rest of the time, if you plan it well, is all yours, so you should use that 1% of planning and thinking time to prioritize your tasks and reflect on how things went.
How to use the 7 Minutes to Live Technique
Lewis offers courses, coaching and resources to help you turn the 7 Minute Life into a fulfilling lifestyle, but you can start small. Every morning, start your day by setting a timer for seven minutes and thinking about what you need to do. During this time, you can create a to-do list , structuring your day taking into account the scale and resource requirements for individual tasks. In the evening, set the timer again and spend those seven minutes reflecting on what went well and what didn’t, as well as what you learned that you can implement the next day, just like you would do an after-action review .
You don’t want to spend more than seven minutes on any activity. The goal here is not to overthink or plan; it means teaching yourself to make quick choices and assessments, take action, and learn from the patterns you begin to notice as you reflect.
You can do this in a planner or phone app, but Lewis also sells a 7 Minutes to Life planner if you’d prefer a journal more specifically designed for that purpose.
While you can certainly use other methods for making to-do lists and prioritizing for seven minutes in the morning, remember that this is about freeing yourself from being too caught up in your own head and learning to make decisions and plan actions faster. . Once you define your goals and mission, you should spend much more time working than thinking or planning, and this is what sets this technique apart from some of the weaker ones.