The 1-3-5 Rule for To-Do Lists (and the Ivy Lee Method)

What is the 1-3-5 rule?

The 1-3-5 rule says that on any given day you can realistically finish one big task, three medium tasks and five small tasks. You plan your daily to-do list with exactly those nine slots and nothing more. Anything that does not fit goes on a separate list for another day.

It was popularized by Alex Cavoulacos, co-founder of the career site The Muse, in a short article, “A Better To-Do List: The 1-3-5 Rule”, that has been shared widely since, including by Fast Company.

The rule works because it turns “how much can I do today?” into a fixed shape. You stop writing twenty items and finishing six; you write nine and have a fair chance of finishing them.

Big, medium and small: what counts as each

Sizing tasks is the only real skill the rule needs. Use time as a rough guide, not a law:

A useful test: the big task is the one you would be pleased to have done even if nothing else happened today. If you cannot finish it in one day, the big task is its next finishable chunk.

How to use the 1-3-5 rule: 6 steps

1. Keep a master list. Every task you know about lives on one list, such as “This week”. The daily list is picked from it.
2. Plan tomorrow before you stop today. Choosing the nine at the end of the day means the morning starts with a plan instead of an inbox.
3. Pick the big task first. Choose the one task that matters most. If you tend to avoid it, make it your frog and start with it.
4. Add three medium and five small tasks. Prefer tasks that support the big one or have a real deadline.
5. Leave slots empty on purpose. If unexpected work lands on you often, the original article suggests leaving some slots blank to fill as things come up.
6. Review at the end of the day. Tick what is done, move what is not back to the master list and pick tomorrow’s nine.

The free to-do list with the 1-3-5 layout has these slots built in. Tasks fill from the top, a full slot is marked, and anything extra goes to a “Not today” group instead of crowding the day. It prints on one page if you prefer paper.

Example: a 1-3-5 day

Jordan is a freelance designer with a client presentation on Thursday. Wednesday’s list:

• 1 big: finish the client presentation slides.
• 3 medium: send the invoice for the logo project, review the printer’s proof, plan next week.
• 5 small: reply to Alex about dates, back up the laptop, order business cards, book a haircut, pay the phone bill.
• Not today: update the portfolio site, research a new font license.

At 5 p.m., the slides and two medium tasks are done, four small ones are ticked, and the proof review moves to Thursday morning. That is a good day, not a failed one: the most important thing got done.

The Ivy Lee method

The Ivy Lee method is an older and even simpler rule. At the end of each workday, write down the six most important things to do tomorrow, no more than six. Put them in order of importance. The next day, work on the first task until it is finished before starting the second, and so on down the list. Move anything unfinished to the next day’s list of six, and repeat every working day.

The story behind it is told in many productivity books: in 1918, Charles M. Schwab, president of Bethlehem Steel, asked the consultant Ivy Lee how to get more done. Lee spent 15 minutes with each executive explaining the method and asked Schwab to pay whatever he felt it was worth after three months; Schwab is said to have sent a check for $25,000. Treat this as an anecdote. As James Clear notes, no original source for the conversation has been found; the most careful account points to Scott Cutlip’s history of public relations, The Unseen Power (1994), and the earliest retelling found dates from the 1960s. The method is worth trying on its own merits, not because of the check.

1-3-5 or Ivy Lee?

Use 1-3-5 when your days mix big and small jobs and you need to see how they fit. Use Ivy Lee when you have fewer, larger tasks and your main problem is switching between them. You can combine the two: keep 1-3-5 slots, but work through them in a strict order, big task first.

1-3-5 vs Ivy Lee vs eat the frog vs Eisenhower

Choose your situation

Meeting-heavy days. Count meeting time first. With five hours of meetings, try 1-2-3 or 0-3-5: skip the big task and move it to a lighter day rather than pretending it will fit. The original article also suggests cutting the number of items when much of your day is meetings.

Students. The big task is one chunk of the week’s largest assignment; medium tasks are readings or problem sets; small tasks are admin like emailing a tutor. Plan the week’s big tasks with the study schedule maker.

At home or on a day off. Try 1-1-3: one project (clear the closet), one errand trip, three small chores. The same shape keeps a free day from turning into a chore marathon.

Low-energy days. Keep the shape but shrink every size. A small version of the big task still counts.

A printable 1-3-5 template

Paper works well for this rule because the nine slots are visible at a glance. Print one sheet per day with the tool: choose the 1-3-5 layout, fill in tomorrow’s tasks and press Print, or print a blank template to fill in by hand. A good routine is to keep a small stack of blank sheets on your desk, fill one at the end of the day and leave it on the keyboard for the morning.

If you prefer your phone, save the list as an image for your lock screen, so the big task is the first thing you see.

Common mistakes

• Nine big tasks with small labels. “Email the landlord about the lease” may take ten minutes or two hours. If a “small” task keeps getting moved, it is really medium.
• Filling all nine slots every day. Empty slots are allowed, especially on busy days.
• No master list. Without somewhere for everything else to go, extra tasks creep back into the day.
• Doing the five small tasks first every day. It feels productive, but the big task slips. Start with the big one, or at least give it a fixed time.
• Planning in the morning rush. Plan the night before, when you know what happened today.

What the research says, and its limits

The 1-3-5 rule and the Ivy Lee method have not been tested in controlled studies. What they do is apply a few well-studied findings:

• We plan too much for one day. In Buehler, Griffin and Ross (1994), students expected to finish their theses in about 34 days on average and took about 56. A fixed cap of nine or six tasks builds in the margin that people rarely leave for themselves.
• Writing a plan quiets unfinished tasks. In five studies by Masicampo and Baumeister (2011), unfinished goals caused intrusive thoughts and hurt performance on other tasks, and making a specific plan for them removed those effects. That is the case for a master list plus a written plan for tomorrow.
• When and where beats good intentions. A meta-analysis of 94 tests by Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) found that deciding when and where you will act improved follow-through. Giving the big task a start time uses this.
• Urgent-looking tasks win by default. Zhu, Yang and Hsee (2018) found in five experiments that people chose urgent-looking tasks over more important ones with bigger payoffs. Naming the one big task in advance protects it.

The limits: the exact numbers 1, 3 and 5 or 6 are rules of thumb, not research results. The right number of tasks depends on your job and your day. Treat the numbers as a starting shape and adjust after a week.

Start with tomorrow

Open the free to-do list in the 1-3-5 layout, fill tomorrow’s nine slots and leave one or two empty. For the week around it, use the weekly planner, and see how to plan your day for time blocking. If planning every evening is the habit you want to build, the 30-day productivity habits plan makes it one small step a day, or you can build your own plan. More in the productivity topic.