1 3 5 Rule: A Simple Framework for Daily Productivity

Have you ever been busy all day yet felt you accomplished little? Is it because you’ve tried rocket science productivity strategies?

Drop them. You’ve got enough complexity at work. You need an incredibly simple but effective method to categorize and get tasks done.

Enter the 1 3 5 rule – a simple framework for productivity that doesn’t feel like rocket science.

What is the 1-3-5 rule?

The 1-3-5 rule is a simple task management framework that implies organizing tasks into three categories: one major task, three medium tasks, and five small tasks. The hard stop is, however, no more than nine tasks.

At its core, this rule acknowledges a fundamental reality about productivity: not all tasks weigh the same or require the same level of mental energy. So, trying to do them all in the same way comes with consequences like inefficiency and even burnout.

The 1 3 5 rule was popularized by Alex Cavoulacos, co-founder of The Muse, and became so well-known due to its simplicity.

It’s quite simple to see your list ticked with completed tasks just by deciding in the morning which is that one task that will make all the difference (the major one), three medium-sized tasks, and some remaining five small tasks that still move the needle and impact other projects, and team members moving onward with their work.

By the way, here’s a guide on how to protect your energy.

How does the 1-3-5 rule work?

The beauty of the 1-3-5 rule lies in its simplicity. It can also be adapted to everyone’s style of working, as well as any type of industry. It doesn’t need any training, complicated setup, or anything like that. It does, though, align with our brain’s natural way of processing and prioritizing information.

It all boils down to a quick reflection and distinguishing between critical tasks, large tasks, or routine tasks in your to-do list. Here’s the breakdown of the 1 3 5 rule:

One big task

Look on your to-do list for the day of the week, and there must be that one task that is defined by attributes like most important, challenging, or time-consuming. These are important tasks that will make the most significant impact on your work goals.

Typically, these tasks require deep work, focus, and creativity. It can be writing a detailed proposal, preparing a client presentation, or making strategic planning for the next quarter. Big tasks usually take more hours of focused work and should align with your most important priorities.

Three medium tasks

Medium tasks are also important in the higher equation of tasks; however, they require less time and are less intensive. When preparing your to-do list with medium-sized tasks, here are some examples you can add to the category:

• Analyzing weekly performance data;
• Writing a comprehensive team update;
• Reviewing and giving feedback for a colleague’s work;
• Planning next week’s content calendar;
• Doing team one-on-ones.

Five small tasks

Small tasks are your quick wins, which can typically be completed in 30 minutes or less but still need to get done, as they impact other projects or the team’s progress. Here are some examples of small tasks:

• Quickly responding to important emails;
• Checking time-tracked in your automated time-tracking tool;
• Updating project status in your task management system;
• Scheduling a call;
• Following up with your team on some deliverables;
• Making small website updates;
• Filing expense reports.

Why does the 1 3 5 rule work?

Research from Gallup shows that autonomy in organizing your tasks, time allocation, and creating your own work schedules reduces burnout by 43%.

As a prioritization and time management method, the 1-3-5 rule capitalizes on psychological principles that make it particularly effective:

1. Lower cognitive load: By limiting your daily tasks to nine, your brain’s natural capacity to process information. Our working memory can effectively handle 7±2 items at a time, according to the study “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” disclosed by George A. Miller in 1956. Hence, the less cognitive load we give our brains to process at a time, the more we can stay focused on tasks and the more productive we are. That’s exactly why the 1 3 5 rule is highly effective.

2. Reduced decision fatigue: Our brain’s ability to make decisions deteriorates with each choice we make in a day, no matter how big or small. Therefore, deciding during the day what tasks to work on and working in a chaotic, non-structured way generates a lot of fatigue. Maintaining productivity is hard this way, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. With the 1 3 5 rule, you’re taking decisions head-on, and you have a clear structure that reduces the number of decisions about what you need to work on next.

3. Enhanced motivation: The entire task prioritization process done with the 1 3 5 rule requires you to make a to-do list, which is then checked off. This process tackles your brain’s reward system, and you feel more motivated to go on with your tasks. “The Power of Small Wins,” published in HBR, found that making progress in meaningful work is the single most important motivator in a professional’s day.

4. Realistic workload planning: Do you often plan and expect to finish more tasks than you actually end up doing? We’re all guilty of that – in psychological terms, it’s called the planning fallacy. With a time management technique like the 1 3 5 rule, you get a chance to see in advance all your big and small tasks listed, and this makes it hard for you to over-commit.

How to incorporate the 1-3-5 rule into your daily schedule

Step 1: Morning power planning

A. Start your day by syncing your preferred AI productivity tracker (like Timeular, Microsoft Copilot, or similar tools) with your calendar. This tool should be able to analyze your historical productivity patterns and suggest an optimal time block for you to do your most important tasks, or the major ones, according to the 1 3 5 rule. Ideally, you should follow this process, as it’s best to schedule a harder task when you’re at peak performance.

For instance, if you’re a software developer, your “major” task might be architecting a new microservice, and your AI tracker could recommend doing this between 9 AM and 11 AM, as based on your previous coding sessions and energy patterns, it helps in maximizing productivity.

Note that at the end of this step, you should know your big task for the day.

B. Identify your small and medium tasks based on priorities, their length, and their dependency on other tasks and projects. You could use a project management tool that automatically categorizes all tasks and their priority based on project deadlines, team dependencies, and overall business impact.

Step 2: Stay focused and work on your tasks

Now that you have clarity on your priorities for the day stay focused on finalizing them one by one. Soma strategies that help you be productive are the following:

A. The Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro technique implies working in bursts of 25 minutes, with five-minute breaks in between the sessions. This technique is highly helpful in keeping you focused on single-tasking rather than multitasking and adds time pressure on yourself, which is beneficial in overall productivity. All you have to do with the Pomodoro method is:

1. Set a Pomodoro timer: Set a timer for 25 minutes to work on the task you’ve chosen prior.
2. Focus deeply: Immerse solely in that task, and if needed, apply methods to protect your attention, like turning off notifications on your phone and laptop.
3. Take a 5-minute break: Once your first 25-minute session is done, have a short break to recharge. It’s best to walk, stretch, or relax, but don’t focus on work.
4. Repeat the cycle.

B. Task batching

With task batching, as its name says, you’re grouping certain tasks together based on similarity, priority, or deadlines. In this case, it’s best to group based on length. For example, small tasks could be grouped together. Here are the steps:

1. Create time blocks: Allocate time blocks for each task category with time blocking ( e.g., batch all small tasks at the beginning of the day after you’ve finalized your biggest task).
2. Do tasks in batches: Focus exclusively on one task category during each time block, as it’s best to finalize as many tasks as possible without context switching, which wrecks your productivity.
3. Incorporate breaks: Take short breaks between task batches to maintain focus and stay mentally healthy.
4. Repeat: Once you’ve finalized a batch of small tasks, now you can group medium-sized tasks in a larger time block, as these require more time.

Step 3: Keep your flexibility for unexpected tasks

Track your progress in real-time in order to shift your focus if needed based on how disruptions and priorities occur. Stumbling upon unexpected events is inevitable, but you still need a backup plan so you can maintain focus and not hinder productivity on what matters most, but reprioritize your tasks.

For this purpose, you can follow a dashboard with your real-time productivity metrics. When an urgent client request arrives, your dashboard can instantly show the impact of task reshuffling on your weekly goals and suggest the optimal reallocation of time blocks based on your historical performance data and current priorities.

Step 4: Do an end-of-day review and adjust accordingly

In order to become better and adjust your schedule to be more efficient each day, carry an analysis of the effectiveness of the current one:

It’s best to check completion rate data in the automated time tracker to see the actual time spent on each task category and update the task size categories based on actual time data. Refine your peak productivity time blocks, make a small contingency plan for your common interruptions, and plan buffers accordingly.

Common pitfalls in applying the 1-3-5 Rule

There are a few challenges in the 1 3 5 rule, as with any other planning method. We either fall into the planning fallacy mentioned above, have an optimism bias, end up with an unrealistic workload, or commit to urgent tasks.

The first pitfall is setting unrealistic task sizing, meaning that you misclassify task sizes. What seems like a medium task might actually be a big task in disguise, so you need to categorize tasks either by your experience with such tasks or with time-tracking data. The second pitfall is that you’re ignoring context switching and its side effects. Our brains need 23 minutes and 15 seconds to recover fully after an interruption. So, try not to schedule your big task right before a meeting or immediately after lunch.

The third pitfall is overcommitting to urgent tasks. Resist the temptation to jump in and help a colleague each time they need help with something urgent or be the savior of any situation. Remember, urgency doesn’t always equal importance.

1 3 5, Start!

By now, you should have learned an effective and simple method to prioritize tasks the right way and at the right time. Start small, track your progress, and adjust as needed.

Your future self will thank you for it.