I run a few companies. I have tried every productivity ritual that has been written about. The one that actually works for me takes 2 minutes every morning.
The Ritual
0:00–0:30 — Hotlist scan. Open Toodledo’s Hotlist. Read the 6–10 tasks listed. No editing yet. Just see what is there.
0:30–1:00 — Open-loops saved search. Click my “Open Loops” search (status = Next Action, no due date, not completed). Anything that needs attention this week? Star it. It will show up in tomorrow’s Hotlist.
1:00–2:00 — Pick the top 3. From everything I just scanned, pick three things that, if done today, make the day a win. Star them or set Top priority so they pull to the top of the Hotlist.
Close laptop. Make coffee. Start working.
What Used to Eat 4 Hours a Week
Before this ritual: 30 minutes every morning of “figuring out what to do.” Five days a week. Plus the cost of being in the wrong tasks half the day because I never made an explicit plan. The 2-minute ritual replaces all of it. Every Friday I have my weekly review. Every morning I have this. The system works because it is small enough to not skip.
Toodledo’s saved searches and configurable Hotlist make this possible. Without those features, the 2-minute ritual would not work — there is no way to scan the right tasks fast in a tool that doesn’t surface them automatically. Other founders in the forums have shared variants of this. Worth reading.
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