That’s the system.

Go through your emails, and for each one that’s been sitting there, add a task to the One List. Star the email and archive it so it’s out of your inbox. Repeat until your inbox is empty. Do the same with messages you haven’t responded to because they contain a task or decision. Emails and message apps aren’t meant to store your tasks.

Maybe you have a bunch of things on your computer desktop. Go through those and put them on the One List.

Go through your Ten Thousand Browser Tabs and take the tasks each one represents, put it on your One List, and bookmark and close the tab.

OK, now you have One List. Things should be a lot simpler (some possible additions are below in the last section). There’s a good chance you’re feeling overwhelmed. That means we need to talk about the underlying mental model of this One List simple system.

The Underlying Mental Model

The reason why a long list is overwhelming is because underneath the task list is a view: 1) we think this is a list that we need to finish; and 2) we fear that if we can’t finish it or at least stay on top of it, we will be inadequate in some way. We base our self-worth and safety on whether we can finish this list … but it’s too long to finish! In fact, a task list will never be done, even when you die.

This is an unhelpful mental model that produces stress and overwhelm.

Instead, I propose a different view: Tasks are options that we can use as we create the art of our lives.

Imagine you have a big palette of paints, and you get to use them to paint your art on a canvas. You don’t feel like you need to finish all the paints on the palette, right? It’s not a matter of getting them all done so you can avoid feeling inadequate.

Instead, the paints are your supplies for making art. They’re things you can dip your brush into, to create the art of your life.

You can have fun with your art. You can fully express yourself and the deepest truth of yourself. It’s a whole different game.

I’ve noticed that most people (myself often included) make complicated task and organizational systems. Today I’d like to talk about why and how to simplify that.

Task systems that are overcomplicated require a lot of overhead work — if you have to spend a lot of time organizing and going through your system, you’re spending time on the system that could be spend doing something more meaningful.

Having better productivity systems doesn’t make us more productive. Actually being able to do the hard stuff isn’t down to the system — it’s down to your ability to face uncertainty and resistance. And that’s something you can train in — but it won’t be found in a productivity system.

Having better organizational or note-taking systems doesn’t make us more organized. It is busywork to distract us. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Why do we spend so much time figuring out our systems and making them so complicated? It’s simply fear. We’re overwhelmed and afraid we can’t handle it all. We think if we get a better system it’ll be the answer we need to start crushing things. We are afraid of dropping one of the many balls we have in the air. It’s simply fear, and everyone has it.

What I’m going to share here is a simple system — it’s not meant to be the perfect system, or the one you have to adopt to start crushing things. It’s meant to be a simple model that can show how simple things can be.

But perhaps more important is the mental view of tasks that underlies this simple system. I’ll talk about that as well. And then I’ll get to the most common obstacles or objections to this kind of simplicity.