Ivy Lee Method: 6-Task Daily Plan Explained (2026)

The Ivy Lee method is a daily productivity routine from 1918: each night, write down the six most important things to do tomorrow, rank them by importance, then work through them one at a time the next day. It's older than the radio, simpler than every modern productivity app, and still works for the same reason it worked then — it pre-decides what matters before the day starts.

TL;DR — the Ivy Lee method in one paragraph

In 1918, productivity consultant Ivy Lee gave executive Charles Schwab — then president of Bethlehem Steel — a 15-minute method for getting more done. Schwab tried it for three months, then wrote Lee a check for $25,000 (roughly $500,000 in today's dollars). The method has five rules: write six tasks for tomorrow, rank them by importance, work the first until done before starting the second, carry unfinished items to tomorrow's list, repeat daily. That's the whole thing. Lee called it the simplest productivity habit a busy person can have, and the math still favors him.

The story (and the $25,000 check)

Ivy Lee was a public-relations consultant in early-1900s New York. In 1918, Charles M. Schwab — at the time president of Bethlehem Steel, one of the largest industrial firms in America — asked Lee to help his executives get more done.

Lee asked for 15 minutes with each one. He offered no fee up front: "Send me a check for whatever you feel it was worth," he reportedly told Schwab. Three months later, Schwab mailed Lee a check for $25,000.

Twenty-five thousand dollars in 1918 is roughly equivalent to $500,000 in 2026 dollars, depending on the inflation index you use (the CPI multiplier from 1918 to today is around 20×). That's half a million for a 15-minute conversation. Whatever Lee said, it landed.

The most-cited modern write-up is James Clear's Ivy Lee method article, which is also the page Google features. The story is documented widely, including in Ivy Lee's Wikipedia entry.

The 5 rules of the Ivy Lee method

That's it. No app, no certification, no system. A scrap of paper and a pen.

Why a 110-year-old method still works

Three reasons, all backed by behavior science:

1. It pre-decides what matters

The hardest moment in a workday is not the work — it's deciding what to do next. Decision fatigue is well documented: roy baumeister's research on ego depletion (1990s–2000s) suggested that repeated decisions wear down self-regulatory capacity, though more recent replication work has tempered the strongest claims. What's well-supported is that morning planning, rather than mid-day deciding, helps people start sooner.

Writing the list at night means tomorrow's first 30 minutes are not spent debating. You walk in, you read item 1, you start.

2. It forces real prioritization

"What are your top six?" is uncomfortable. It means the seventh thing isn't getting done. People who skip ranking end up working on whatever's loudest — emails, Slack pings, last-minute requests — instead of the task that actually moves the work forward.

Ranking is the move. The first item on the list is your most-important task. Cal Newport calls this the MIT (most important task) in Deep Work (2016). Ivy Lee was doing it a century before the term existed.

3. It builds an end-of-day closure ritual

The Zeigarnik effect (Bluma Zeigarnik, 1927) says unfinished tasks intrude on attention. Capturing them on tomorrow's list — instead of leaving them in your head — quiets the intrusion.

Pair the Ivy Lee list with a brief end-of-day shutdown — review what got done, capture what didn't, write the list, then stop — and you close the day cleanly. Open loops become tomorrow-loops. The brain trusts the system and lets go. For more on the science of how repeated daily routines actually wire in, see our guide to habit formation.

How to actually run it

A concrete walkthrough — what most articles skip.

Step 1 — pick the time

End-of-day works best. The "tonight" version (after dinner, before bed) is too late for most people because tasks are stale by morning. Late afternoon — at the natural energy dip — is the sweet spot. Block 5–10 minutes.

Step 2 — write 6, not more, not fewer

Six is the magic number Lee proposed. Three is too few — most professionals can sustain more. Ten is too many — by 10 a.m. you'll be cherry-picking the easy ones. Six is enough to fill a day; few enough to force ranking.

Step 3 — rank by importance, not urgency

Most people confuse the two. Urgent: someone is yelling about it. Important: it moves the work forward in a way that matters this quarter.

A useful test: "If I only did item 1 today and nothing else, would the day still count?" If yes, item 1 is ranked correctly.

Step 4 — single-task the next morning

Open the list. Read item 1. Don't open email. Don't open Slack. Start.

If you can't finish item 1 (waiting on someone, blocked by a meeting), do as much as you can, then move to item 2. Don't switch because you got bored or hit a wall in the first 5 minutes. Switching too easily is what kills the method.

Step 5 — at end of day, carry unfinished items forward

If items 4–6 didn't get done, they're items 1–3 on tomorrow's list (unless tomorrow's reality changes the priority). Then write three new items 4–6. Six total. Always six.

4 modern modifications

The original 1918 version is fine. These four tweaks make it work better for modern jobs.

Modification 1 — theme days

Each weekday gets a theme: Monday = strategy, Tuesday = customer calls, Wednesday = building, Thursday = admin, Friday = review. Your six tasks have to fit the day's theme. This is roughly the approach Jack Dorsey described running Twitter and Square in the early 2010s.

When it helps: founders, creators, anyone juggling many task types.

When it doesn't: roles with daily urgent inbound (support, sales ops).

Modification 2 — energy-matched ordering

Instead of ranking strictly by importance, rank by importance and the energy each task requires. High-cognitive tasks (writing, deep analysis, hard conversations) go first, when energy is high. Admin and email get bumped to the afternoon when your prefrontal cortex is tired.

Anders Ericsson's research on deliberate practice (summarized in Peak, 2016) found that elite performers concentrate the hardest work in 90-minute morning blocks. Energy-matched Ivy Lee is the daily-list version of that finding.

Modification 3 — time-boxed Ivy Lee

Add a timer to each item. Three hours for item 1, one hour for item 2, etc. Total your time and check it against your real workday. Most people who try this discover their list is silently 12 hours long.

Helps if: you chronically underestimate time and end up missing items 5–6 daily.

Skip if: your work is too unpredictable for time blocks.

Modification 4 — digital Ivy Lee in a habit tracker

The cleanest digital version: use a daily checkbox in a habit tracker for "wrote tomorrow's 6 tonight" and another for "completed the top 3 today." Two checkboxes, two streaks, no complicated software.

This is where HabitBox fits — a checkbox per habit, custom icons, calendar heatmap. The point isn't the app. The point is making the act of writing the list into a tracked habit so the system doesn't decay. HabitBox runs on iOS and Android, with no account needed.

When the Ivy Lee method doesn't work

Honesty: it doesn't fit every job.

Interruption-heavy roles. Customer support, ops, IT — work that's mostly inbound. The Ivy Lee list assumes you control most of your day. If you don't, it falls apart by 10 a.m. Try a "top 2" version: two priorities for the gaps between fires.

Parents of toddlers and other heavily interrupted lives. Six tasks is a fantasy when each block is 20 minutes long and you don't choose when the blocks start. Use the 3-task variant. Three is plenty when interruptions cost real time.

Creative work with no clear endpoints. "Write a chapter" doesn't fit the same task slot as "send invoice." For creative work, time-box (modification 3) instead of completion-box. "Write for 90 minutes" is item 1; completion is the time, not the output.

Crisis weeks. When everything is on fire, the method becomes a guilt list. Switch to one item: "today's most important thing." Resume the six when the fire is out.

How to track your Ivy Lee streak

The list-writing is the habit. The list-doing is the work. Track the habit, not the work output.

After two weeks, look at the pattern. Days when you skip the list usually correlate with worse output the next day. That correlation is the case for keeping the habit.

For broader thinking about which habits to track and which to let go, see our guide to what habits to track. For making the habit stick, pair it with an existing daily routine — that's habit stacking.

Ivy Lee vs other common methods

Ivy Lee is the simplest. It's not necessarily the best for every job. For most knowledge workers, it's the lowest-friction starting point.

Common Ivy Lee mistakes

Writing the list in the morning. Loses the pre-decision benefit. Always do it the night before (or end of workday).

Listing 10 things "just in case." Two extra items kill the ranking discipline. Six is the cap.

Reordering mid-day. If "something more urgent" comes up every day, your list isn't honest about urgency. Re-rank tonight, not now.

Treating the list as a wishlist. The list should be realistic for the hours you have. If items 4–6 never get done, the list is too long, not you too slow.

Skipping the daily habit. The method works because it's daily. Twice a week is not the Ivy Lee method.

Trying to redesign it. Productivity nerds love to fiddle — add tags, color codes, second priority lists, sub-tasks under each item. The whole point of the method is that it's small enough to actually run. Every addition raises the chance you'll skip it on a busy day. Resist the urge until you've run the plain version for at least a month.

Confusing the list with the calendar. The Ivy Lee list is what you'll attempt to do. Your calendar is what's already booked. Make sure the list fits the unbooked time in your day — meetings, focus blocks, and unavoidable interruptions count against the time you have for the six items.

FAQ

Try it tomorrow

If you want to test the Ivy Lee method honestly:

1. Tonight before bed, write six tasks for tomorrow. Rank them.
2. Tomorrow morning, work item 1 before opening email or Slack.
3. Tomorrow night, do it again. Carry incomplete items forward.
4. Run it daily for two weeks before judging the result.

Two weeks is the floor. Most people who try it for less than that don't get a fair read on whether it works.

If you want a daily checkbox that gives you a streak for "wrote tomorrow's six tonight," that's exactly what habit trackers like HabitBox were built for. The list does the work. The tracker keeps the habit alive.

The whole method fits on a Post-it. Half a million dollars said it was enough.