Have you ever ended the day feeling frustrated because you worked hard but still didn’t feel like you made real progress? Maybe you checked a few things off your list, but the list just kept growing. Or worse—you were so overwhelmed that you didn’t know where to start, so you ended up scrolling social media or answering emails just to feel productive.
I’ve been there. And so have countless others.
The problem isn’t that you’re not working hard. It’s that your focus is spread too thin. The good news? There’s a way to regain control, eliminate overwhelm, and actually start making meaningful progress.
A while back, I wrote out a massive list of all the marketing tasks I wanted to tackle—website updates, social media revamps, videos, content creation, and so on. I thought it would help me stay organized, but instead, it paralyzed me.
There was just too much.
I kept staring at the list, unsure of where to start. Even when I completed a few tasks, I felt like I wasn’t moving forward because there was still so much left undone. And that kills motivation.
Here’s the truth: When you try to do everything, you end up doing nothing that really matters.
Instead of feeling accomplished, you feel defeated. Instead of being productive, you’re just busy. And that’s a dangerous cycle.
A game-changer for me was a concept I learned from Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner: The Daily Big 3.
Here’s how it works:
Each day, instead of tackling an overwhelming to-do list, you identify the three most important things that will make the biggest impact on your goals.
Before you start your day, ask yourself:
“What three tasks will move the needle the most?”
That’s it. Write those down and commit to them.
At first, it might feel weird—like you should be doing more. But here’s the reality: If you try to do ten things in a day, you might get some of them done, but not necessarily the right things.
If you accomplish your Big 3, your day is a win.
Even if other things don’t get done, you know you made meaningful progress. That builds confidence. That builds momentum.
Another simple but powerful habit is ending the day by identifying three wins.
Instead of focusing on what didn’t get done, take a moment to reflect:
Your wins don’t have to be massive. Maybe you had a great conversation with a friend, stuck to your workout plan, or tackled a difficult task at work. Maybe you learned a valuable lesson from a mistake.
Whatever it is, acknowledge it.
When you shift your focus to progress rather than perfection, you start to build momentum. And momentum leads to long-term success.
Starting today, try this two-part system:
1️⃣ Begin your day by identifying your Daily Big 3. Write them down and commit to them.
2️⃣ End your day by recognizing three wins. Celebrate progress, no matter how small.
These two simple habits will help you stay focused, eliminate overwhelm, and finally start making real progress toward your goals.
You don’t have to do everything—you just need to do the right things.
Let’s live intentionally.
Let me ask you a question as we get started today, how long is your typical to-do list? You might keep one master to-do list with a ton of items, or you might just make a to-do list on a daily basis…how long is that list usually?
For most people, it’s not unusual to have 10 - 20 items or sometimes even more on their to-do list.
I was talking to a guy recently who said he literally had over 150 items on his big to-do list.
As you can imagine, he was feeling completely overwhelmed. He had no idea where to start. And even when he did knock out some of the items, it felt like by the time he was done, his last had grown even more!
Can you relate? Have you experienced a season in your life where you felt like you were always behind? Maybe you’re in that season right now.
Not too long ago, I wanted to revamp some of my marketing process. I wrote down a list of all of things I felt like I needed to get done for this initiative. I wanted to redo some of the pages on my website, revamp social media platforms, record some marketing videos, create resources, and so on and so on.
I thought it would be a great idea to just dump all of the tasks I had to do on a spreadsheet so I could clearly see everything that needed to be done.
This can be a helpful exercise, but I went wrong by not giving each tangible deadlines and breaking it down into manageable, bite-sized chunks.
I kept looking at the list and feeling overwhelmed because there was just too much to do. There was so much to do it felt intimidating and it made me not want to do any of it.
When things feel way too big, oftentimes, you will struggle to find motivation. When things feel overwhelming, you have to deal with a lot of unnecessary stress. It’s hard to know where to start. When you are staring at a long list, even when you do a few things, it feels like you could’ve done more and that will wear on your confidence and motivation over time.
And when things feel overwhelming, which tasks do you usually gravitate towards? Usually the easiest tasks. You want to feel like you are making progress so you start working on the easiest items first…the ones you can get done with the quickest.
The problem with this approach is that oftentimes, those are items that are not the most important. A lot of times, they are things you probably didn’t even really need to do in the first place or you couldn’t automated or delegated them.
This can lead to where you are busy all the time, but not necessarily effective. You are working hard, but you are not moving the needle.
That’s one of the most frustrating places to be, where you feel like you are working extremely hard but you are not seeing progress.
Or where you did 5 things on your list but you still see a list of 5 items that didn’t get done and so you feel like it wasn’t a good day.
Or the worst case, where you are paralyzed by all the items on your list that you distract yourself all day with things like email or social media.
I have experienced all three of these scenarios…it is extremely frustrating.
So how do you actually break out of this? How do you stop the stress and the overwhelm?
I want to give you two helpful exercises today that you can immediately implement that will help you feel more in control of your task list, feel more productive each day, narrow your focus to the most important tasks, and gain some momentum.
The first one was introduced to me by Michael Hyatt in his Full Focus Planner.
He recommends starting each day with what he calls your Daily Big 3
You Big 3 are the top three outcomes you need to accomplish that day that will truly make the biggest impact on your life.
So you take time the night before or first thing in the morning, to ask yourself “What are the three things I could do that would have the greatest impact on my life?”
You identify the three things that will produce the greatest results and then you commit to doing those three things for the day.
Listing only three things might feel like you aren’t being as productive as if you list out 10…it feels weird at first, but it forces you to get crystal clear on the actions that are truly going to make the biggest difference. You zero in on the things that truly matter the most.
If you do those things that day, the day was a win. If you don’t do those three things, then you learn what got in the way and you make sure you hit your three the next day.
This has been a game changer in my life. I am the kind of person who is competitive and I will get frustrated with myself if I don’t do everything I thought I should have done.
When I had 10 things down on my list, I might do 7 of them, but I would still beat myself up for not getting 3 done. This kind of attitude always put you in a deficit or a negative headspace.
In reality, I did 7 things and that is amazing, but I don’t feel like I am making progress because I didn't do 3.
There’s nothing that boosts your confidence and satisfaction like progress. And there’s nothing that drains your energy and motivation like feeling like you are failing.
When you narrow your task list down to 3 things that you know are the most important and then knock those things out first, you experience a great deal of satisfaction and momentum in your life.
You can consider that day a win.
If you have a list of 20 things to do and you know you will never be able to do them all, you are not going to end the day feeling like you won. And that is a big deal over time.
It doesn’t just boost your satisfaction and confidence thought, it truly helps you be more productive.
What is more productive, doing 3 things that truly moved you closer toward your long-term vision and goals? Or doing 7 easy tasks that didn’t actually make a big difference?
I think you know the answer…the three important items will have the biggest difference.
Author Jim Collins has a great quote where he says “If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any.”
When you have more than three things, you have diluted focus. And when you have diluted focus, you are going to get diluted results.
Having three things each day will help you stay locked in and focused for the day.
And then if you finish your 3 tasks early, you can move on to some of the other tasks if you’d like, but either way, you knew that day was a win because you did the 3 things that mattered most.
I would encourage you to give this a try. I am confident it will help eliminate some of the overwhelm in your life. Anyone can finish three tasks in a day. Identify what matters most, commit to doing them, put them on the schedule for the day, and then just focus and knock them out.
The other practice I want to recommend goes hand in hand with this one and that is finishing your day by identifying three wins each day.
Like I mentioned, nothing fuels motivation and satisfaction like progress.
But it’s so easy to never actually let yourself celebrate progress because you are too focused on what still needs to be done or on all the ways you failed that day or didn’t live up to your expectations.
It is so easy to compare yourself to other people and feel like you aren’t actually progressing or getting better…that is extremely discouraging.
Recently, I have been spending a lot more time practicing the drums. I have carved out time each day to work on things that I need to improve on.
One of the things that kills my motivation the most is when I start to compare myself to others who are ahead of me. I could have a great day practicing, feel like I made progress, and then get on social media and see someone else who is much better than me, and then all of a sudden I am now in a negative head space.
I feel like I am not very good or that today’s practice didn’t matter that much.
The days where I do the work, sense my progress, and compare myself to my former self, are the days where I truly feel excited and like I am getting better.
When I compare, I lose motivation.
When I track progress and only compare myself to myself, I gain motivation.
It’s too easy to either compare yourself to others or to be so focused on everything else that needs to be done, that you don’t take time to celebrate the progress you have made that day.
I think that is a huge missed opportunity. Would you rather go to sleep each night feeling like a failure because you aren’t as good as others, or would you rather go to sleep proud of the work you did that day and the progress that you made?
Would you rather go to sleep stressed out about all of the things you still need to do tomorrow, or satisfied that you did your best and made progress today?
That’s why I recommend implementing the practice of identifying 3 wins for the day before you go to bed. Ending the day with three wins puts you in a state of momentum…it gives you the sense that you are progressing and moving toward your dream.
If you did your Daily Big 3, those could be your three wins right there.
It could also be something else. It could be your attitude that day. It could be how you treated someone. It could be the fact that you skipped that temptation to grab fast food and instead ate a healthy meal at home.
You can even turn your mistakes of that day into wins by turning them into lessons. Even if you feel like you didn’t have a good day at all, you can take time to learn from your mistakes, turn them into lessons, and then celebrate the fact that you now have a better understanding of why those mistakes were made.
If you did eat fast food when you didn’t really want to, you can take time to learn from why the mistake happened. You can learn that you don’t make as good of decisions if you are super hungry and tired after work. So maybe the next day you pack a snack that you can eat late afternoon to keep you from being so hungry when you get off.
That would be a win! You are now equipped with a better tool for the next day.
Finishing the day by identifying three wins will keep you in a state of gratitude. Feeling good, being grateful, and feeling like you are making progress are all essential to your confidence and your happiness.
There you go! You know have two simple things that you can do each day to keep you focused and motivated each day.
Take time to identify your Daily Big 3 and then do those three things first each day. At the end of the day, take a few minutes to write down three wins for the day to finish that day on a high note.
I hope today was encouraging and helpful! Please share this with someone else if you think they might benefit from it.
I appreciate you joining me today. You were made to do something great! I believe in you. You have what it takes to live intentionally and pursue your God-sized goals.
Go live a life you are proud of by living intentionally.
