{"id":1977,"date":"2013-05-09T07:45:41","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T11:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alifeofproductivity.com\/?p=1977"},"modified":"2021-12-08T17:19:19","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T17:19:19","slug":"rule-of-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chrisbailey.com\/rule-of-three\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rule of 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='et-box et-tick'>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class='et-box-content'><b class=\"takeaway\">Takeaway:<\/b> If you&#8217;re looking for focus and purpose at the start of each day, use the Rule of Three technique.<\/p>\n<p><strong class=\"readingtime\">Estimated Reading Time:<\/strong> 1 minute, 19s.<\/div><\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1978 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/chrisbailey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/ruleof3.001.jpg\" alt=\"ruleof3.001\" width=\"675\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/chrisbailey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/ruleof3.001.jpg 675w, https:\/\/chrisbailey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/ruleof3.001-480x356.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) 675px, 100vw\" \/><\/p>\n<p>One of the simplest, most powerful time management techniques I&#8217;ve come across lately is the &#8220;Rule of 3&#8221; (from the book <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Getting-Results-Agile-Way-ebook\/dp\/B005X0MFD2\">Getting Results the Agile Way<\/a><\/span>). With <i>A Year of Productivity<\/i>, I have a lot of stuff to tackle. Media interview requests that are coming in (!!), interviews to book, articles to write, and books to read. With so much stuff, it&#8217;s hard to figure out what to focus on. Needless to say, the Rule of Three has helped me immensely.<\/p>\n<p>The rule is simple:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, write down three things you want to accomplish <b>today<\/b>.<\/li>\n<li>Second, write three things you want to accomplish <b>this week<\/b>.<\/li>\n<li>Third, write three things you want to achieve <b>this year<\/b>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s it.<\/p>\n<p>The book has four recommendations for when you implement the rule:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><b>Start every day<\/b> by figuring out what to focus on for the day.<\/li>\n<li><b>Test yourself<\/b> throughout the day &#8211; do you remember what your three priorities are?<\/li>\n<li><b>Improve your estimates<\/b> &#8211; pay attention to how long you think things will take, and improve your estimates as time goes on.<\/li>\n<li><b>Feel good about your results!<\/b> Pat yourself on the back after you achieve what you set off to, for the day, week, and year.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The problem with a lot of productivity and time management systems is they require a lot of overhead, but the Rule of Three doesn&#8217;t. Every morning you think about the main three things you have to do, and then you do them. It&#8217;s a great technique to figure out what you need to focus on.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be diving deeper into the <i>Agile Results<\/i> methodology, and will write more as I discover and experiment with it.<\/p>\n<div class='et-box et-info'>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class='et-box-content'>If this is your first time here, welcome! Here are a few good places to start: <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a title=\"Welcome!\" href=\"https:\/\/chrisbailey.com\/welcome\/\">Welcome<\/a><\/span> (about the project), <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a title=\"Productivity Experiments\" href=\"https:\/\/chrisbailey.com\/experiments\/\">Experiments<\/a><\/span> (the cool productivity experiments I&#8217;m conducting over the year), and <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a title=\"Stats\" href=\"https:\/\/chrisbailey.com\/statistics\/\">Stats<\/a><\/span> (interesting stats about the project so far).<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The problem with a lot of productivity and time management systems is they require a lot of overhead, but the &#8220;Rule of Three&#8221; doesn&#8217;t. It&#8217;s one of the simplest, most powerful time management techniques I&#8217;ve come across lately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Rule of 3 - Chris Bailey<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/chrisbailey.com\/rule-of-three\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Rule of 3 - Chris Bailey\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The problem with a lot of productivity and time management systems is they require a lot of overhead, but the &quot;Rule of Three&quot; doesn&#039;t. 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