The Ivy Lee Method or Ivy Lee's priority task list
an efficient way to boost your productivity
The Ivy Lee Method is based on prioritizing your daily tasks and the peculiarity of the method lies in limiting their number to no more than 6 tasks.
The one who created it is the publicity expert Ivy Lee (July 16, 1877 – November 9, 1934), which is also recognized as the founder of modern public relations.
The method appears to have emerged as a result of the collaboration between his public relations firm Ivy Lee & Associates and Bethlehem Steel Company.
The American company was at the time one of the world's largest steel producers and shipbuilders and had invested a lot to increase the production of armor plates used in the building of war vessels. Some problems aroused when Congress passed a bill authorizing the government to build similar facilities. What Ivy Lee did in this case was to orchestrate a large public relations campaign to stop the government plant as a waste of taxpayer money.
But Ivy Lee's collaboration with this company was not limited to the situation presented above.
It seems that Charles M. Schwab, the president of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, was constantly seeking to
increase the efficiency of his team. In this regard, Ivy Lee was asked for help and the solution offered was
prioritizing tasks, exactly what is known today as the Ivy Lee method.
Apparently, this simple solution was so efficient that Charles M. Schwab referred to it as the most profitable
advice he had received.
The basic principles and rules of applying the Ivy Lee method are extremely simple. Most likely, this is also the reason why the method is very effective and continues to be applied to this day.
Although at first glance it may seem superficial, it must be borne in mind that it had extraordinary results from the beginning. Moreover, the fact that these results appeared at one of the largest steel and shipbuilding companies of the twentieth century. Therefore, there is no doubt about its proven effectiveness.
The Ivy Lee method can be applied by anyone in any field. Whether it is about prioritizing daily tasks in personal or professional life, the results obtained will be just as remarkable. Here are the steps to follow:
Write down in order of their importance all the activities you need or want to carry out in the next period. You can consider both short-term and long-term activities. In time, as you come up with ideas, add them all to this list. The balance will be kept because as you work on them they will become completed activities and you will delete them from this list.
The most important feature according to which you can prioritize your daily tasks is their importance. And
their
importance is about the influence that the respective task will have in fulfilling the goal you are heading
towards. Therefore, it is from this point of view that you must estimate your tasks. How much does it help you
doing and accomplishing a certain task to get closer to your goal?
For an objective assessment of the priority of daily tasks, you can use for example the Eisenhower Matrix. This
is also called the Urgent Important Matrix and is a matrix of decisions in which tasks will be framed according
to their importance and urgency. It is very simple to apply, provides immediate results, and, over time, will
form you a very useful way of thinking in making decisions of any kind.
More details about this and how to use it can be found in the article Urgent Important matrix, a To-do list
efficiency tool.
Also, from the same article, you can download the matrix templates in Excel, Word, PDF, and printed format.
The Ivy Lee method recommends reserving at the end of each day a few minutes to analyze the general To-do list and make your planning for the next day. Choose from the general list the 6 activities you want to do the next day and plan them in order of importance. If the activities can be divided into several smaller tasks then do so. Includes the amount of time you assign to each task.
Because this way in the morning you will not waste time trying to decide what to do. Moreover, you will start
your day in a good mood, given that you know exactly what you have to do next and what you want to accomplish
that day.
Another advantage of planning the day the night before is that once the list is made, you will not actively
think about it until the next day. Such an approach allows you to focus on your day-to-day activities and make
the most of your time.
It is also important that during this time the subconscious can offer you remarkable solutions. Until the next
morning when you start working on daily tasks, you may come up with ideas to help you accomplish them in a
different manner, a more efficient one.
Respect the planning done the night before and start working on your first planned task. If you do things in the order established the night before, you avoid wasting time in the morning trying to decide what to do first. You know exactly what to do, so you can start working right away.
If you followed the previous step and arranged your to-do list in the order of importance of the activities, it
means that the first thing you have to do the next day is the most important task of the day. Therefore, it is
essential that you start working on this task as soon as possible and complete it.
It is a very effective method of avoiding unnecessary delays and helps you achieve visibly improved results in
terms of efficiency and productivity. Besides, the fact that you manage to complete the most important task of
the day is an achievement in itself. As we all know, achievements are very big motivators. Therefore, you will
benefit from this momentum throughout the day.
When working by the Ivy Lee method first of all you need to complete the activity you started, and only later can you move on to the next one. It is recommended not to leave things unfinished because you will have to go back to them and resume the work. This way, you risk wasting precious time juggling tasks.
It is scientifically proven that multitasking is not efficient. When our attention is divided between several activities it is almost impossible to be careful and correct in everything we do. Moreover, every time we change our activity, we waste time trying to focus on the new one.
Therefore, most likely we will not finish what we had to do in the optimal time frame and the final results will not have the best quality either. If we also take into account the fact that there are many chances that we will have to resume the activity to correct the errors, we realize that this way of working is in no way efficient or productive.
It is for these reasons that it is recommended to focus our attention on one task at a time. In this way, we have the opportunity to carefully fulfill it and it will certainly take us less time to complete it. Also, the quality of the final product will be clearly superior in this situation.
There is also the possibility that the planned activities will take longer than you anticipated, or something unforeseen may occur that will mess up your planning. Even in this case, you continue to follow the planned order and what has not been completed you may reschedule for the next day.
When you make a schedule for the next day, you take into account the situation known at the time you do this. But certain things can go differently the next day and you may find yourself in a situation where, for example, you cannot complete one of the tasks you have on the list. Or maybe you can't even handle it at all.
If possible, include that task in the To-do list for the next day. Put it exactly in the corresponding order according to the importance of the tasks you have to do then. But if you have to finish it today, re-evaluate the following tasks and see which one can be moved to the next day.
PlanArty is a time management solution that gives its users the possibility to compile their To-Do lists directly in the Calendar. Thus, they can take advantage of the big picture of their plans and avoid overloading the daily schedule or overlapping daily tasks. Also, when necessary, they can adapt their program very easily, rearranging their tasks with drag & drop.
Consistency is one of the factors that positively influence the results you get with the Ivy Lee Method. By working like this daily, you make sure that in time you'll complete all the activities you have proposed.
In general, the results of an occasional activity cannot be compared with the results obtained with the
activities we carry out repeatedly. The same thing happens with this method.
In a way you will perform if you apply it only from time to time, and quite differently if you do this
daily.
By applying this method regularly, you will get better results from one day to the next.
