Transcript

I think I found the perfect question.

Well, hey there. Welcome back.

The Perfect Question

I think I found the perfect question. No, really. I found a question I can ask almost anyone. It will elicit a genuine, honest, thoughtful response. It’s a useful subject. It’s something that they think about regardless of what they do for a living. And it’s something that most people struggle with because they know they haven’t quite gotten it right. And I’m included in that. And the question is, what do you use for a to-do list?

You’re thinking about that now and feel free to pause it and then continue. But the answer typically is well I use a number of things. You know sometimes there’s some frustration there where someone says well this is what works best for me so far and I know it’s not the best. They’ll use a combination of a calendar post-it notes notes emails to themselves. Uh maybe they use an old style paper planner. Maybe they try to go without one and it adds even more stress to them. They put things into a document, but there’s typically not this universal perfect answer. And again, I am one of those people.

Designing the Ideal To-Do List: A Wishlist

So, I thought long and hard and I thought, you know what? I I I miss having a Franklin planner from a long time ago in which I could write down my to-do items and then I could transfer them to the next day, the ones that I didn’t fill out, and they’d be there waiting for me the next day. Plus, I’d sleep better. So, then I got thinking about what my ideal to-do list would be. Like, if I got my wishes, what would I do? Well, I’d want something that was small enough to carry with me at all times. And I already carry my phone with me at all times. So, maybe it should be something my phone can do. I’d want to be able to just make a simple list with really no limits. When I check off an item, it leaves it in the past so that the next day, the stuff I didn’t check are automatically there waiting for me. I would probably want to be able to color code things because you can pick out differences in things with colors far faster than you can in any other way.

I wouldn’t want to prioritize things because I’m already prioritizing things. I don’t want to do master project planning with a to-do list. That’s a whole separate set of software tools and so forth. And as I talk about in my book, because prioritization is something you’re already doing anyway in your head. And even if you put something at number one and you agree with it, you’re still going to scan the list and go, “Well, which one of these is kind of fun and feels good to do and it’s kind of easy? I’ll do that one right now.” So th that’s basically it for my core desire features.

From Core Features to a Fantastical Wishlist

So then I got thinking about, well, what would an ideal to-do list do? Well, besides it automatically carrying stuff forward to the next day, what if I could look back at a previous day and go, oh wait, what did I accomplish yesterday? And it unlike the written planner, it wouldn’t have the stuff I didn’t do. It only would have the stuff I did do. What if there was something that I was staring at and I thought to myself, you know what? I got to take care of that tomorrow. I would love to just send it into the future to tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow, what if it was Wednesday and you thought, you know what, I got to do this thing on Saturday. What if you could go to Saturday and then you could put a task on there and then when Saturday showed up, that task would be there waiting for me. Oh, that’s right. I got to take care of that today. That’s cool. I haven’t thought about that for the last 3 days. But wow, that was cool. What if it knew how long I had been doing at least one thing per day? In other words, every day that I check something off, it kind of maintained a streak like like XNAT chat did. Find that kind of motivating. I’d find that I’d find at least a way to check off one thing per day that way and it would make me kind of look at the list every day. Okay, this sounds crazy, but since I’m color coding stuff, what if I could look somewhere and I could see a pie chart of the colors? Like I’d be like, “Oh, this I seem to do a lot more purple. I didn’t realize I was doing so much yellow.” You know, and let’s say yellow is chores. And you go, “Yeah, that’s Saturday. That’s when I do all my mostly a lot of chores and things.” And what if there was even like a bar graph for the last 30 days that would show the breakdown of everything and see how my productivity was and and so forth. Okay, since we’re talking about motivations, what if you had oh, I don’t know, like a trophy case. And let’s say once you hit 50 tasks, you’d get like a little shiny trophy that would be, you know, animated or something. I don’t know, right? And when you hit 100 and imagine doing something and using it long enough to do that. But a paper planner can’t do that. You’re not going to go back and count up stuff. That’s silly.

Integrating a Personal Brand

And if I’m getting my wish list, what if what if someone writes experimental psychology books like Because and three voices and so forth that helps you to get stuff done and their mission in life is actually to help you understand yourself and get stuff done. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was an area where those books were listed as well in some way? And what if that same person had 250 plus episodes of a podcast? Wouldn’t it be kind of cool to sort of have those in that same area?

This is just getting crazy and fantastical.

I Selfishly Built This App

So about 26 days ago or probably previous to that, I put on my coding hat again and I decided to selfishly make exactly what I just described. I wanted the core features and then I wanted to add the really cool stuff. And I didn’t in any way, shape or form want to detract from having a very simple, easy to use experience.

So, I built my very own to-do app. And I built it selfishly for myself so that I could use it.

Because it’s not an app, but rather a website. It’s available on my phone. It loads instantly. Okay, there’s no installation. You don’t have to worry about the the app store or anything like that. You don’t have to put in any of your information, use a credit card, any of that stuff because it’s a site. It’s also visible on my desktop, which is super cool because I can look at that everpresent task list on my desktop and it’s sometimes easier to type something on there than it is to type something on your phone. If I get rid of a task on my desktop, it’s no longer on my phone and vice versa.

A Tour of the Finished App and Its Features

And yes indeed, I can go back in time and see how many tasks I’ve done every single day. I can color code with five different colors and change them at any time. I can swipe to the right on a task and it’ll immediately send it one day into the future, which is super helpful and super easy. I can move a few days into the future and put a task there and it’ll just lie there quietly, silently waiting for me. I can click on a dashboard which will show me my trophies for 50 tasks, 100 tasks, etc.

It does indeed check out my streak and maintain a streak and it shows it in the form of a little flame with a number on the main screen as as well as that screen because it’s very motivating to go, I don’t want to lose my streak. I better check off one of these things. And that can be the difference between doing something or feeling very guilty about saying, “Oh, I should have done that yesterday.” It does indeed have a bookshelf of all the books that I’ve written. They’re cute little tiny covers. And if you click the cover, you can say, “Hey, I read this.” Or you can go see it on Amazon. It has a section that shows 250 plus episodes of my podcast that you can click on. It’ll take you immediately to the podcast. You can click on the iTunes link. It’ll take you right to iTunes. It’s searchable, so you can start to type some of the words in the title and it’ll keep narrowing it down for you in real time. And it includes two bonus buttons. One of them is Mark’s favorites in which you can click the button and you can see the ones that I curated as the ones that are kind of my favorite episodes because people keep asking me that question. Well, which ones are your favorite episodes? There’s also a button for interviews because sometimes people just want to go, “Oh, I want to hear the interviews.” Which who who have you interviewed? You click that button, it immediately lists all the interviews. And sometimes I have interviews that are favorites, too. There’s also an expanded achievements area. And these are achievements that I don’t really define. They’re kind of fun things. They’re kind of Easter eggs built into it so that when you do things, it tracks it and says, “Oh, that was a that was a cool thing. you’ve you’ve unlocked this.

An Exclusive Offer for (serious) Podcast Listeners (48-Hour Window)

It didn’t take me long into me designing and creating this selfishly where I thought, you know, I think other people would like this. So, I expanded the way that I was designing it so that other people could indeed use it. So, back to that conversation, when I would have conversations with people and ask them, “What do you use for your to-do list?” I would then share same frustrations. I would tell them what I selfishly built, which would inevitably lead to them saying, “Well, I want some of that. How do I get that?” And so, I built a little entry page that allows me to use a QR code on my phone. People can scan that and boom, they get a form with exactly three fields. It’s their first name, it’s their last name, and it’s the particular code I give them that allows them to instantly create their own instance of it, which they can then save on their phone screen so that they have a little app icon that instantly works. And it also works on their desktop. No login, no payment exchanging hands, no credit card on file, not even an email address, and it doesn’t even cost anything.

So, because you listen to my podcast, because you’re the kind of person who does want to get things done, because you seem to like my stuff, I’m going to make this available for people who are listening to this particular episode.

I’m going to have a link in the article that accompanies this. When you go to the link, you need only type your first name, your last name, and then the code that I will provide you in this episode because it’s for people who listen to my stuff because I value people who like to get things done. And it doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean necessarily you’re a giant mover and shaker. It just means you’re actually able to make decisions. And we talked about this a couple episodes ago about how the CEO mindset in my opinion is something people don’t talk about which is the ability to say yes or no very quickly and not waste their time and other people’s time. And I mentioned about how people who are well-known people, people who are famous people, you know, and so forth sometimes say yes to me and when they do they say it quickly. In fact, the last episode is with Joseph Malazi, who is the executive producer, and he said yes very quickly. He probably would have said no very quickly as well because he likes to make decisions just like other people in that position. And so, I appreciate and respect that to the point where if you’re one of these people and you want to benefit from a list like this, then I’m happy to share it with you. The code will only accept a limited amount of people by design.

The same design which is preventing me from posting this out to the internet to a billion people. I don’t want a billion random people using this. (CODE REVEALED IN PODCAST)

And you have your own to-do app designed by me to my selfish specifications.

Because this invite is not to be shared out into the wild and it is specifically for people who actually do like to take action, which are the people that would benefit the most from this. This link will expire in about 48 hours after this podcast is published. (see QR Code below)

Final Thoughts

The app has feedback built into it. So if you do use this and you have some kudos or you have something you want to pass on, feel free to use that. I spent a huge amount of time making the help very extensive on it so that you can learn quite a bit from that.

So if you do use it, enjoy it. I’m excited that it might help you with your productivity and might help you enjoy getting stuff done in your life. If it’s not for you or you you’ve decided not to pursue this, that’s fine, too. But maybe I at least got you thinking about what makes your ideal to-do list and why. And it might just help you in the way that you use whatever it is you’re currently using. I also want to apologize cuz I did go about 3 minutes over my self-imposed 10-minute limit, but I had a lot of stuff to tell you on this and I’m very excited about it.

So, as always, take care of yourself. You’re important. and I’ll see you later.

(Music Outro)

Well, I just want to be happy to get there. Glad that you as work, others need fun. Some of us need purpose to overcome, but try to do what you love when it’s said and done. Cuz there’s so many differences in each of us. Trust your gut. It can show you what you want. Living life every day, late at night, not okay. All I want.

I want to announce that my new book, my 10th, is out. It’s called BeCAUSE!: The Fundamental Psychological Building Blocks That Enable You to or Prevent You from Accomplishing Anything, Everything, and Nothing. Check it out on Amazon. It’s only $9.99.

To get the todo ap, scan this with your phone and use the code provided in the episode. The code expires in about 48 hours.