Lesson 32: The $25,000 Idea

There is this story that I once came across during my research on productivity.

Charles Swabb a famous business man in 1918 once hired a productivity consultant Ivy Lee to help him get more things done and push the business forward.

When Ivy Lee visited Charles in his office he had only 15 minutes to convince Charles on how to get more things done be more productive.

During his 15 minutes with Charles, Lee explained his simple method for achieving peak productivity as follow:

At the end of each workday, write down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow. Do not write down more than six tasks.

Prioritize those six items in order of their true importance.

When you arrive tomorrow, concentrate only on the first task. Work until the first task is finished before moving on to the second task.

Approach the rest of your list in the same fashion. At the end of the day, move any unfinished items to a new list of six tasks for the following day.

Repeat this process every working day.

After mentioning this Lee left and asked Charles to send him an amount that he thought the idea was worth.

After about 2 weeks Charles was impressed with the value he was getting from this idea and emailed Ivy Lee a check worth $25000, the value of this amount at this time is about $500,000.

We can all use this $25,000 worth idea in our daily activities to push forward and make more progress in various areas by prioritizing the important things that we need to get done. 

What 6 things will you do today in the order of their importance to push you towards your goal?

Think about it!