The Ivy Lee Method: The $25,000 Habit of Planning Tomorrow Tonight
By Ray Chooi · Founder of TaskGrower ·
In 1918, consultant Ivy Lee gave Bethlehem Steel's executives a routine. It takes fifteen minutes a day. A few months later, the company's president mailed him a cheque for $25,000. That is roughly half a million in today's money. The routine still works. It still takes fifteen minutes.
Tomorrow's list, tonight
Charles Schwab was president of Bethlehem Steel. He asked Lee for a way to get more done. Lee's advice to each executive was almost insultingly simple.
- At the end of each workday, write tomorrow's six most important things. No more than six.
- Rank them in true order of importance.
- Tomorrow, start with the first task. Work on it until it is done. Then move to the second. Only in order.
- Whatever is unfinished at the end of the day moves to tomorrow's six.
Lee told Schwab to pay him whatever the idea proved to be worth. The cheque suggests it proved to be worth quite a lot.
A century later, psychologists explained why it works. Peter Gollwitzer researched implementation intentions. People who decide in advance when and where they will act follow through more. Roughly double the rate of people who only intend to do it. An evening list is a stack of those decisions. You make them while you are calm. Tomorrow morning there is nothing left to negotiate. You also skip the morning tax. That foggy half hour spent deciding what to do instead of doing it.
How to use the Ivy Lee method in any task system
- Set a five-minute evening trigger. Attach it to something you already do. Closing the laptop. The last coffee. Brushing your teeth. Write the list before the day ends.
- Cap the list. Six items, or fewer. If everything is important, nothing is ranked. Ranking is the entire method.
- Give every task a real day. A task "for sometime" is a wish. Writing it on tomorrow specifically turns intention into an appointment.
- Roll over without guilt. Unfinished items simply move to the next list. The rollover is a feature. It forces you to re-rank them against tomorrow's reality.
Your top-ranked item is usually your frog. The eat the frog method would tell you to do it first. The two methods are a natural pair. Ivy Lee decides the order tonight. The frog rule protects it tomorrow.
How TaskGrower bakes it in
TaskGrower is built on the Ivy Lee assumption. It never needs to mention it. Every task lands on a real day. There is no "someday" pile. Someday is not a day.
- Plan tomorrow from tonight. Flip to tomorrow. Add your short list. Rank it by dragging. When you open the app in the morning, the decision is already made.
- The list has a shape. Days sort into one big, a few medium, a few small. That keeps the evening list honest about what a day can actually hold.
- Order matters. Up Next works from the top of your list down. The ranking you set tonight is the path you walk tomorrow.
The habit has its own quest, "Tomorrow Starts Tonight". Plan tomorrow on five separate evenings. Most people who do it five times keep doing it. That is roughly what Schwab's cheque was paying for.