How to Never Procrastinate Again9 min read

What did you accomplish yesterday? Today? I found a magical combination of two amazing productivity laws that allow me to complete my goals and tasks every day. By understanding and incorporating these principles into your daily routine, you can optimize your workflow and accomplish more of what’s important (in less time).

In this post, I’ll show you how to maximize your productivity using these two powerful techniques: MITs and Parkinson’s Law.

Most Important Tasks (MITs)

MITs are the most important thing you need to accomplish that day. This, on its own, is extremely difficult but extremely rewarding. I outline my entire life based on yearly, monthly, weekly, and then, finally, daily goals. The MITs are the daily goals, but they depend on the annual, monthly, and weekly goals.

The idea is to focus on a small number of high-priority tasks that will significantly impact what you are trying to accomplish on your goals. Now, I can’t help you identify your goals (that’s your job), but what I can do is help you accomplish them.

Step 1: Set Clear Goals

Let’s start small. Is there something you need to accomplish this week? This month? Can you break that down into smaller sub-bullets? For example, I bulk record/edit/publish these articles so I can spend time being a doctor, exercising, and spending time with friends and family. However, in one particular week, my goal might be “Finish 5 YouTube Videos.” And “finish” means having those videos sent to my editor and illustrator, scheduled on my calendar (so companies can place advertisements on them), and planned on my website; how might that week look for me?

• Day 1: Brainstorm YouTube videos, Select 5 Video Ideas, For each video create a compelling title, brainstorm a thumbnail
• Day 2: Write 2 Video Scripts (Video scripts X, and Y)
• Day 3: Write 2 Video Scripts
• Day 4: Write 1 Video Script and Edit all the previous scripts
• Day 5: Record all a-roll and B-roll. Upload all content and send to editor and illustrator.

Extra Bit: that “finish 5 YouTube videos” weekly goal, was broken down from a yearly goal of publish a YouTube video every other week.

Now, am I better set up for success by having these specific goals? What do you think? I wake up on Tuesday (day 2), see that I need to write videos X and Y, have those empty WordPress articles open on my computer, and start writing. It’s that simple. I do everything I can to reduce the friction to accomplish essential work tasks and everything I can do to increase the friction of falling into activities I don’t want to do (like watching TikTok).

I need to finish 5 YouTube videos that week, so I’ll outline the MITs for that week as above on Sunday. Now, that is an example week. My MITs might also be doctor tasks or life tasks. It depends on what the most important tasks are for that period.

2. Be Reasonable with the MITs

If I had my MIT for one day to “finish 5 YouTube videos,” that would be ridiculous! I know Zach, I could not accomplish that in one day even if I spent all 24 hours doing it. Also, I would sacrifice sleep, exercise, and some relaxing time (which keeps me optimized in the long run).

You know you best; what can you reasonably accomplish in a day? Now, also, it’s important to be hard on yourself. If your MIT takes 1 hour to complete, and you have 10 hours of free time to complete a task, you should add some. If you have 1 hour to complete 3 MITs, and it would normally take 12 hours, you are setting yourself up for failure.

I would max out on 3 MITs per day. I have 3-5 LITs (low-importance tasks), which I collect on the Things app, like calling a friend, booking a flight, buying new running shoes, etc.

3. Prioritize

Within the MITs, I like to prioritize which ones are the most important and which ones I want to do first. I tend to like to eat the frog or do the “worst” thing first. My energy is highest in the morning or early hours of the work day; if I can get that first task done, that first win, I’ve won the day already.

I get so into these MITs and LITs that I even rank every activity for the day, so, using my example above, my MITs and LITs for one day might look like this:

MITs:

• 1. Write a video titled “How I Continue to Study While Working 100 Hours a Week as a Doctor.”
• 2. Write video titled, “How I Stopped Wasting 1000 hours per Year”

LITs

• 1. Book flight home
• 2. Buy new running shoes
• 3. Reply to emails
• 4. Plan my meals for the next week
• 5. Clean out my fridge

MITs MUST be completed that day, LITs do not have to finish.

Let’s get into how to actually complete those MITs using Parkinson’s Law.

Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time available for completion. So, the more time we “give” a task, the more time it will take to complete that task.

So, what do we have to do? We have to set deadlines and focus on completion (not perfection). It’s that simple.

1. Set Deadlines

This is the most crucial part and what makes using Parkinson’s law work. We MUST have deadlines that we stick to. Again, we need to have deadlines for the year, month, week, and day, and, newly here, the hour.

So what might this look like for my YouTube videos goal above?

• Year: Publish a video every other week for a year
• Every 2 months: Complete 5 YouTube Videos
• One week a Month: Dedicate to Making YouTube videos (one week is sending to an editor, and the other week is finalizing and uploading/scheduling everywhere)
• One Day, would be the breakdown of above, but let’s use the same example of writing that 1 video. Now, it might take me two hours to write a video, and I know this. So how do I break it down within the day?
• In one Two Hour Slot I Schedule not “write the video” but “COMPLETE the video” between, say, 8-10 am.
• Apply above everywhere.

This may seem simple above, but it is pure magic. Magic, because you start to accomplish everything you ever thought possible. The work doesn’t become complex; it becomes easy because you know what, when, how, and where you will complete it. The hard part involves figuring out what’s essential to do and how to break it into smaller tasks.

2. Complete it (don’t perfect it)

Now, here is where the secondary magic comes in. We don’t need to write the next novella; as you can tell, sometimes my videos or articles have spelling errors, but maybe 5% of my videos have a mistake, and that is OK because I am producing good content most of the time, which is all I care about. Also, my viewers care less about perfecting this or that angle; they want the content!

Casey Neistat says the story is all that matters, and I agree with him (to an extent). On YouTube, it helps to have some good production quality, especially audio, but the most important thing is content.

Combining the Two

Ok, remember how I had a list of MITs and LITs? Here is how we use those with Parkinson’s law to get everything done.

Integrating these rules into your life

Now, importantly, you have to implement these tasks in your life, and what you are trying to accomplish matters. Some people have simply different timing and freedom to perform specific tasks.

• Are you a student trying to get perfect grades while performing research and starting a business? Well, your goals and ability to complete each of those goals during your period will be different around lectures, studying for tests, and maybe working a job for extra money. When can you fit in the time to accomplish each of those goals? Which is the most important? Which should you give the most time to? Schedule it.
• Are you a parent with kids and a full-time job? Do you want to excel at your job, focus on your family, and build a side hustle? Your yearly, monthly, and weekly goals will be different. Your MITs will be different. What is most important? When can you fit in the time to accomplish each thing? Schedule it.
• Are you out of a job, with no commitments, and with financial stability? Well your time and ability to accomplish certain things is different than the above two scenarios. You may be able to be much more aggressive with your deadlines and goals but you STILL must set them.

For example, I am a full-time doctor with a YouTube channel and a business who wants to be healthy and happy. On certain weeks, when I am in the hospital, I may have only 30 minutes of free time (outside of eating, sleeping, working, and exercising); my MIT for that day will likely be miniature. But I still always have one. For example, here is a week of MITs while working at the hospital.

Mon: Fix Website Design Bug on my resource Page

Tues: Have a chat with my Mom

Wed: Send my Resume to 5 people for advice

Thur: Finish a powerpoint on a case presentation of a patient

Fri: Outline a newsletter post

Now, there was another week when I was completely free where I did those YouTube videos because I had maybe 4-6 hours a day of free time as opposed to 30 minutes

Summary

1. Plan out your most important tasks for the year, break that down into monthly tasks, at the beginning of every month, break down that monthly goal into achievable weekly tasks, every week, break the weekly goal into achievable daily MITs and LITs. It’s ok if you don’t accomplish the LITs.
2. Every year, month, and week, SCHEDULE the time or the deadline to accomplish the task.
   • At the beginning of every week (usually on a Sunday) I like to schedule out the time during each day when I can accomplish the 1-3 MITs I will be doing.

Some essential final points to make this work:

***MITs should NOT overtake proper sleep, diet, and exercise; they are the backbone of everything

***MITs CANNOT be pushed back; they must be completed; now, of course, if life happens, and it often does, or you seriously mis-assessed how difficult a task would be, they can be pushed back. But this should happen <5% of the time (I think this occurs around 1% because I’ve been doing it for 2-3 years).

***LITs, however, are much more flexible. I write them as “fun little bonuses” and often ignore them or push them back to reading a book, watching a TV show, or chatting with a friend.

***Carefully curate the 1-3 MITs to do every day. Be as specific as possible.

***Now, while you are working, I would make sure to be efficient with that working time; that initially comes down to setting the right goals, but #2, it means working effectively with strategies like Pomodoro, eliminating distractions, and figuring out when your best working time is (all articles linked).

Create reasonable MITs, schedule and set deadlines to complete them, maintain a healthy body and mind, and accomplish (seriously) every one of your goals.