The Ivy Lee Method is a simple, yet effective half-million dollar productivity method.
Ivy Lee (1877–1934) was an American publicity expert and worked as a consultant for a number of businesses. One of those was for Charles Schwab, then president of Bethlehem Steel Corporation.
In 1918, Schwab consulted with Lee in order to become more productive. In The Unseen Power, historian Scott M. Cutlip stated that Schwab was obsessed with efficiency. Thomas Edison himself called Schwab a “master hustler”.
The story, which from my research was first popularized by Earl Nightingale, goes like this:
Schwab: “Show me a way to get more things done.”
Lee: “Give me 15 minutes with each of your executives”
Schwab: “How much will it cost me?”
Lee: “Nothing. Unless it works. After three months, you can send me a check for whatever you feel it’s worth to you.”
Then during those 15 minutes with each executive, Lee laid out the following five step method:
- At the end of each working day, write down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow. Do not write down more than six tasks.
- Prioritize those six items in order of their true importance.
- When you arrive tomorrow, concentrate only on the first task. Work until the first task is finished before moving on to the second task.
- Approach the rest of your list in the same way. Don’t worry if you’ve only finished one or two by the end of the day; the others can wait. If you can’t finish them all by this method, you could not have finished them with any other method.
- Repeat this process every working day.
It’s simple right? Well, Schwab and his team starting using this method. It worked well, very well.
Schwab send a check of $25,000 to Lee. In today’s dollars that would be more than $400,000!
Do you think it would be worthy of you to follow a nearly half million dollar productivity method?
I do and that’s why I’ve been using this method, with the following tweaks, every work day for the past several years.
Essentially, this is Eat that Frog, followed by Eating the Frog, five more times in order. If you’ve finished your top priority for the day, then it makes sense to then tackle your next top priority.
I do this to the best of my ability, though I can’t same I am flawless about putting it into practice. One thing that does get in the way is scheduled time slots. I write these on my list, but I’m not going to put off a ten o’clock appointment just because I haven’t finished my priority list.
Typically, I use only five items as I find that is a more realistic number. And I’m actually aiming to bring that down to four or three items instead.
Lastly, I do this first thing in the morning, as part of my meditation and journalling routine, rather than the night before.
As you can see, something very simple can also be very effective.