Task Management using the Fibonacci Method
Daily planning is a key part of any system. There is no shortage of techniques out there to help you get your day off to an organized and productive start. Unfortunately none of those systems exist without their own limitations which, to be honest, is to be expected. Let's take a look at one technique and see how we can improve it to be more useful and flexible.
The 1-3-5 method is based on the understanding there is no way to complete all the things on your task list in one day. By accepting that near fact, the method provides a structure to narrow down your list to things that are accomplishable as well as substantive. The premise is simple, as most good methods are.
When planning your day you choose one large and important task, three medium tasks, and five small tasks. There is no delineation around which tasks you should choose, only that by maintaining the 1-3-5 proportions you should be able to accomplish those tasks you have identified. By it's nature, this method is simple and easy to implement. The challenges arise though with that level of simplification and where it fails to account.
If you do some basic math you'll immediately see this method commits you to getting nine things done each day. While that may seem to be a good number, keep in mind these tasks are not proportionate in size or impact. If you made broad assumptions and said the three medium tasks are equal to the one large and the five smalls are equal to the one large, you quickly see how the number of tasks to complete can come across as inadequate.
There's two ways that immediately come to mind to increase your throughput of completed tasks within this method. One is a simple change while the other requires more explanation. Let's begin with the simple one.
In the base definition of the 1-3-5 method there is no designation of the types of tasks to address. If someone is thinking about this method my first recommendation is to run two groups (or threads for purposes of this adaptation) with one for professional and one for personal tasks. Right away by adopting this approach you have doubled your task throughput. Two larges, six mediums, and ten smalls are on the chopping block each day.
The second approach requires expanding base 1-3-5 method using a concept from mathematics called the Fibonacci sequence. If you're unfamiliar with what the Fibonacci sequence is, each number in the sequence is the sum of the two previous numbers in the sequence: 1,2,3,5,8,13 and so on. How could this possibly be useful when it comes to managing tasks? No one said you had to have only one large task on a day.
Rather than using 1-3-5, you could use the Fibbonaci and start with 2, 3, 5. This gives you two large and impactful tasks each day without disproportionately increasing the number of medium and small tasks. Let's say you wanted to up your game even more (we all have those bursts of high productivity), just slide the sequence up one notch and you're now at three large, five medium, and eight small.
Taking extra advantage, if we implement both of the changes you get even more power. For example run professional tasks on a 1-2-3 sequence and personal on a 2-3-5 and you're a busy bee. Flip it for heavy work days, or gear both down for light days. No matter what, the structure of the sequence keeps tasks from becoming overwhelming. How do you put this into practice?
To integrate this into your daily planning, create a structure in your tracking tool of choice, digital or analog, and identify the tasks that need to be done today, have a high impact, and require significant focus and effort. From these you can choose the large tasks for the day. Repeat that process for the medium and small tasks accordingly and you're off and running. You can make this effort easier by assigning the priority or impact to tasks in advance. This way you can pick and choose when assembling your action list rather than having to make decisions on each task at that time.
The most important thing to remember when modifying or upgrading a method is you need to either see an improvement in efficiency or simplification as part of the upgrade. Increases in complexity to handle edge case only scenarios only make the method more unmanageable in the long term and harder to implement in the short.
