Intro: My coaching client, Laura, recently told me that she saved more money than she spent on my coaching because I helped her simplify and consolidate her tech stack. And now I want to do the same thing for you, too. I have put out a free tool called the Tools Audit. It will help you determine what tools you use, how much you're paying, and where you can consolidate and eliminate to simplify what your small business tech stack. You can go to streamlined.fm/tools to get your free tools audit today. That's streamlined.fm/tools.
I have been working on a method to help solopreneurs understand the work that they do so that they can build systems around it. I've been doing this for the last few years because I've learned that most of us are not being super intentional about the work we do each day. We are reacting more to what meetings we have and what emails we're getting, and it's preventing us from doing our most important work.
And I will have more information about this method in the coming weeks. But today I want to talk about a really important first step to get your work week under control. And that is called task journaling. Hey everybody, Joe Casaboni here. Welcome to another episode of the Streamlined Solopreneur, where I help you turn manual tasks into reliable systems so that you can take time off worry-free. And part of building those reliable systems is actually planning your day, your week, your month, your year. I'll be there for you to help you do that. And the way that I plan my day and the way that I understand how my week is going is through something called task journaling.
Now, I don't know if I coined this term. I didn't read it anywhere. But I assume I can't possibly be the first person to refer to this as task journaling. So I don't want to take credit for it. At least not yet. But my absolute favorite task manager is Todoist. And full disclosure, I had a brand partnership with Todoist earlier this year. I've been around the block, and I've used all of the major task managers from Remember the Milk to OmniFocus and everything in between things.
Three reminders, and do you name it? I have tried it. Todoist is the best for me. But a task manager only tells part of the story. It tells us what we got done. It might even tell us what we have to do in the upcoming if we've assigned due dates or deadlines. But it doesn't tell us anything about how we were feeling on the day where we completed those tasks. It doesn't tell us how many tasks we moved or ignored, or how many tasks we checked off just so we would stop seeing them. And it shouldn't.
I use Todoist, so I know everything I have to do. I don't use it to dictate my workday because even though I have a bunch of tasks, there are a bunch of other reasons why I'm going to plan my workday. Maybe I have a bunch of meetings, and I know I'm not going to get a bunch of stuff done. Maybe I woke up and I'm not feeling great, and I'm low energy or. Or whatever.
There are a lot of factors into what goes into planning your day. And soon, I think as this episode comes out, the next one, Episode 524 is going to be walking through how I plan my week, which is also crucial to this solopreneur sweep system that I've been working on. But for today, I want to talk about a different system.
I want to talk about my daily three-task journal system. The premise of this system is simple. You pick three and only three tasks to perform that day. The idea is that if you get those three tasks done, you consider the day successful. And they can be as big or as small as you'd like, but they should be things that you could reasonably get done in your day. And the reason that I picked three is because you don't want to overload yourself. You don't want to set yourself up for failure. You can't just write down 10 things and say, whatever I get to, I get to.
You're going to have some analysis paralysis if you do that. But if you pick three tasks, then you have a very clear plan for your day, and you can divide your day up into those chunks to get those tasks done. About halfway through your day, check in with yourself on the progress you're making. Ask yourself, how are things going, what you've gotten done, and what you're struggling with. You can be as verbose or as Curtis as you'd like. Just make sure to capture the thoughts on how you're feeling. Recently, I journaled that I wasn't making the progress I hoped because my main task for the day was taking up far too much time, like way more than I would have expected. And I also had four meetings back-to-back.
So I really only got part of one task done at check-in, which for me is around noon. Then, at the end of the day, assess your work. Did you complete the three tasks? Why or why not what was effective? What was distracting? Talk about if you're feeling frustrated or productive. Talk about how you're physically feeling. Write these things down. Because knowing when you work your best, when you work your worst, and what things distract you can help you plan around how you're going to get your work done. Carrie Newhove has a book called at your Best where he talks about these things. He talks about how everybody has a green zone, and the green zone could be different for everybody.
Some people, like me, work best in the morning. Some people work best around noon, after they've had some coffee and some time to be awake and to get into the swing of things. I have a lull around 2 pm I know that I am not going to be at my best. Then this is what he calls the red zone, which is where you're least productive. And so maybe you plan your meetings or some non-crucial work or plan to go for a walk or go to the gym, but task journaling, if you don't know those things, will help you understand how you work and when you work best. The idea here is not to track only what you intend to do in a given day, but, like I said, the events throughout the day that helped or hindered you. And again, maybe you didn't get everything done because you had too many meetings. This is why planning your whole week is important, right? I knew that my meeting days for the for the previous week were Tuesday and Wednesday.
And so I didn't plan to get heavy work done on Tuesday and Wednesday. I had zero meetings on Monday and Friday. Those are my no-meeting days. And I had full coverage of the kids for the entire workday, both of those days. My wife was off one day, and my father-in-law took the kids out on a little jaunt on Friday. And so I knew those were the days that I could get deep work done. And so I planned my biggest tasks for those days. It could also just be that you weren't feeling it that day, and that's fine.
It could be that you bit off more than you can chew. That's happened to me as well, where the three tasks were actually like 10 tasks that I didn't realize, and I just grouped them in as three tasks. But logging this and journaling it will help you understand, reflect, and iterate. If you did get everything done, maybe it's because you had three uninterrupted hours to get your crucial work done. Maybe your energy levels were high because you slept great the night before. Maybe you picked easy tasks because you knew you wouldn't be able to do anything too deep. This is what I did the day after I got back from a conference. My flight got in at 11 pm, so I knew I would not get home until 1 am, and so the tasks that I had planned were really easy because I knew I would be low energy, and I got those three tasks done, and so I considered that day a success.
The whole point of this is if you do it right, you get a handle on how you work so that you can build a better system that saves you time and creates the time and space to do your best work. Knowing how productive you are in a day and what aided or prevented you from getting all of your work done allows you to structure your days better. Deliberately limiting yourself to three tasks per day forces you to identify the 15 most crucial tasks. Assuming a five-day work week, then you can move or stack meetings, you can block off time for deep work, you can say no or it can wait to the things that aren't those 15 tasks. By knowing what you are working on, it allows you to prevent people from making their work your priority. This method is so important to me that I actually used AI to create an iOS app for it. It's called the Daily 3 Task Journal, and it sends me three push notifications. At 6 am it says what three tasks do you need to accomplish today? At noon, it says how are you progressing? And at 6 pm it says did you complete your tasks for the day? Importantly, it also has these constraints that you can only ever add three tasks and that they don't roll over because the priorities on Tuesday may be different from the priorities on Wednesday.
Again, given your meetings, deadlines, and other things that may be out of your control. I also have widgets for the home screen, the lock screen, and standby mode. I added shortcut support, obviously, so I could easily export the entries into my daily note in Obsidian. This app has worked so well for me that I decided to submit it to the App Store, and it is available as a beta on Test Flight. If you want to try it out, you can go to Streamlined FM App, and if you're not an iPhone user, I've created a Notion template for you as well there. The tool, though, is not the thing that matters. The method is the important part. It can serve as a foundation for better work that gives you time and space to do the things that really matter.
So to recap, this is how I recommend you use a Task Journal, and even if you do this for two weeks, it'll give you an idea of how you're spending your time and your energy.
So number one, pick three and only three tasks to perform that day.
Number two, halfway through your day, check in with yourself on the progress.
And number three, at the end of the day, assess your work. Did you complete the three tasks? Why or why not?
That's it for this episode of the Streamlined Solopreneur. If you do a form of task journaling, I'd love to hear about it. You can head over to streamlinedfeedback.com if you want to check out the app or the Notion template. You can head over to streamlined.fm/app.
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time. I hope you find some space in your week.