Hello,

We are into the second week of Jan which only means one thing — work is back to normal. Therefore: there's lots to do.

And whether it's an office setting, your side-hustle or even just day to day life, a January fresh start can mean there's a lot that we want to get done.

If you're like me, your Notes app is already filling up with to-do lists about anything and everything in anticipation of setting up a great 2023.

I love a to-do list. But, when you start to need to-do lists for your to-do lists — you know they are getting out of hand. So how do we figure out where to start?

Let's talk about priorities: what to focus on first (prioritise), and how (daily highlight).

Don't forget to subscribe if you're new!

❗️Prioritise Your To Do List

A super long to-do list isn’t particularly useful in helping you get stuff done. What it does a better job at is making you think ‘Sh*t, I have got a lot to do’.

So, what’s the solution?

I present to you: the Effort-Impact matrix. It’s a useful way to prioritise an ever-growing to-do list, or list of things to do on a given day.

1. Easy and high impact - Prioritise: these are the low hanging fruit. Because they are low effort, they should be easy to tick off relatively quickly.

2. Hard, but high impact - Make time to complete these harder, but equally important tasks after the easy but high impact tasks are complete.

3. Easy, but low impact - email/admin/expenses. Save these for the lower energy parts of your day, and make sure they don't take priority over the actual high priority tasks (as email tends to do...)

4. Hard and low impact - work out if they’re really worth it. These tasks tend to be the biggest time drains. Can they be replaced or given to someone else? Perhaps they are high effort because you aren't meant to be doing them.

This ties nicely into ‘The Daily Highlight’.

⚡️ The Daily Highlight

Leaving the low impact tasks (cough, email) until after the higher impact tasks are completed is the basis of the Daily Highlight.

It’s separate to the humble to-do list. The to-do list is a second brain for all the things you need to do but don’t want to have to remember off the top of your head.

The Daily Highlight, on the other hand, is the one thing you absolutely have to get done today.

This is the one main thing that, when you go to bed, you’re happy has been completed.

If something else tries to take priority, compare it to your Daily Highlight and see if it’s more important.

Avoiding work emails until mid-late morning is a superpower, and a great way to get the Daily Highlight done.

Usually, it’ll be more of a distraction than be more important, so this is a great way to stop being derailed from your main task for the day.

I find this helpful, as focusing on my main priority for the day and getting it done frees up a bit of a mental clarity for the next thing that I can then focus on.

One good interpretation of the Daily Highlight is to work on this first thing, while your energy is up and you are yet to be distracted.

This week I'm: ⬇️

• 📖 Looking at setups.com - very sleek and aesthetic showcase of some equally sleek and aesthetic home setups. The sort of idea you wish you had first

• 📺 Watching The Last of Us (Sky) - if the reviews are anthing to go by, this could be as good as the game itself, which is already known as the one of the best games ever made. Lucky for me, I haven't played the game so I will get to see this with completely fresh eyes

• 📱 Enjoying the benefits of resetting my phone. I wiped it completely on NYE because it was so full of rubbish that I didn't need. I didn't restore it from my backup so I have a relatively empty, new feeling phone which is much less distracting. Less clutter (especially in digital spaces) = less mental clutter

• 🗓 Using a paper weekly planner. Great for writing down when I am working, when I can exercise and any social events. Though all of this is in my Google Calendar, I much prefer being able to take a quick look at this on my desk at the start of the day

• 📧 Resharing last week’s Best of 2022 email once again - it's a round up of my favourite books, TV, online articles, newsletters/blogs, places visited, music, tech and purchases of 2022.

Reply to this email to let me know if you have any recommendations for this year!

💬 And finally, a quote

Thanks!

If you found this interesting and useful, feel free to subscribe. I send emails like this every Tuesday (ish).

And as always, feel free to reply to these email if you found this useful!

In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, and have a look at what I’m reading on Goodreads.