🤔 What is it?
In my work, I’ve found that over 80% of managers and company owners spend the first part of their day figuring out what to do.
They open their task management tool (like Asana), glance at their to-do list, and try to recall their priorities.
About 60% of them combine this with weekly planning, which is great—planning is key.
However, planning on the actual day can lead to trouble. Why? It opens the door for low-value work to sneak in and take over your time. Planning ahead helps you focus on the bigger picture and time-block high-value work.
Here’s where things get tricky.
You’ve made your nice and tidy to-do list, right?
Perhaps, you can even imagine your own hand-written to-do list in front of you.
So nice to look at but (sorry to say) not always the best thing. Because what happens next is that your brain immediately scans that list and locks onto the easiest task.
💡Why? It wants to get started and start "ticking things off" to give you that sweet little dopamine kick.
So, your to-do list might look something like this:
Review John’s proposal from the last meeting and prepare 3 next steps
Finish stock-analysis
Clear email inbox
Check Slack
Prepare meetings for X, Y, Z
Now, I can almost guarantee that instead of diving into that detailed stock analysis, you’ll start by checking your email or Slack.
💡 Trust me, your brain is smart
It wants to save energy, and doing the easiest tasks first helps it do just that.
...unless you apply the "ONE Thing" framework. I know—a major cliffhanger. Check out how to do it in the last part of this post.
📝 Complexity score (and why)
Score: 1/10
It's really simple and comes from the book The ONE Thing by Gary Keller.
When you look at your to-do list, preferably before your day starts, the goal is to highlight ONE task—the one with the highest value.
Then, you mentally forget the rest (yes, I know this sounds scary), and focus on that one task as your only goal for the day.
Why? Because while answering Slack messages might make you feel productive, it’s not going to grow your business. However, finishing that stock analysis or getting back to John, your key partner, can have a significantly higher value.
How to implement
The setup listed below is my personal Notion to-do list that I use to keep track of my key projects across my different companies (see all here). You can duplicate this structure to whatever task management tool you use: Asana, Trello, Clickup, etc.

In my example above, I only keep one task in the “In progress” at a time which is the one I’m spending my focused hours on.
Update 17.12.2024: I’ve recently started working with an “Idea Box” which I review 1x weekly to sort out if my idea is worth working on. If I’ve postponed it for 3-4+ weeks, I know it’s probably not worth it and I will archive it.
All finished tasks go to “Done” and the “Cool stuff for later” is for tasks that I think are valuable but the timing is not right.
Here’s how to do it:
Highlight ONE task with the highest value:
Before your day starts, pick the one task that has the most significant impact and commit to it.Ignore everything else. Yes, even your Slack messages.
Use time-blocking to ensure you have the space in your day to focus solely on that task.
This tool sounds simple, but trust me—I’ve seen companies experience double-digit growth by applying this.
Personally, I recommend having two to-do lists:
The “ONE Thing To-Do List”:
This is the first list I look at, for example, from 7 am to 11 am (during my deep work focus time).The general to-do list:
Some might call this the “trashcan of tasks” (maybe that’s just me). Let’s be honest, no matter how structured you are, you need a place to dump your ideas and all the tasks from your colleagues.
Having this separation ensures I don’t get distracted by low-value tasks when I start working.
If I look at my general to-do list first, my brain automatically wants to start ticking off low-value tasks—like quick Slack messages, emails, or that tiny favor for Sara from Marketing (you know what I mean).
This tool helps you stay focused on what truly matters and avoid distractions.

🙋 Want a free consultation?
Reach out to me on LinkedIn or get your free introduction call via my website www.casperbrix.com.
I would love to help you get the right things done - by doing less.
How do you make your to-do list? Hit me up in the comments! :)
Talk to you soon 👋
Casper
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