The Three-Item To-Do List

Be like a CEO

The most effective and highly paid professionals aim to keep their daily to-do list to three items.

So if you’re like me and wake up on a Monday morning feeling like Sisyphus confronted by a barge full of rocks and a whole line of hills, resist the urge to write down, or worse, carry around in your mind, a novel-length to-do list.

Instead, write down three things you can reasonably accomplish that will set up your week for the remaining to-dos, three per day. Write the other things down on some other list.

The busy housewife has so many things she does without thinking about them, like changing diapers, reading to the children, getting supper started or at least thought about by 10 am, and sitting down to nurse the baby, that she doesn’t need to write those things down.

However, if you are in the midst of the postpartum time, have lots of sick kids, or are yourself sick, be sure to make a list on which you write “change diapers” as one of the items, and then cross it off!

Done and done.

Lady writing at a desk, 16th Century

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My book on how to live with the Liturgical Year: The Little Oratory

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As with everything here at the SFH, the best thing is for you to take my ideas, coming from my experience of 45 years of marriage and raising seven children, and apply them to your situation with discernment, prudence, and confidence — and a sense of humor!