Crossing off Your To-Do List for the Busy Person: The Snowball Method

Have you heard of Dave Ramsey's Debt Snowball method?

Basically, it's a debt management system where, instead of paying down the highest-interest rate debt first (your thing with the greatest value), you pay off whichever debt is closest to $0, regardless of interest. This helps you celebrate a "win" early and it naturally encourages people into debt freedom. It's much more effective than trying to make minimum payments for every debt and not notice any dents.

Similarly with our personal ideas, we humans can take on so many projects that we accomplish none of them well. I've been guilty a few times! But one hack that has helped me is using the snowball effect in my goals. What if you wrote a list of all the ideas for work you had and figured out which one is closest to completion so you can check it off? Perhaps your "closest to win" goal isn't the most meaningful of all of them, but one win in your mind will feel so good!

So go ahead, write down your ideas, then consider which is closest to completion, and focus on getting that one done and out of the way! Try it this week. Don't pay any attention, at least for now, on the goal which has the most value. Let's just get out of idea debt one piece at a time! (Disclaimer: just like having to at least pay minimums on bigger credit cards, so you still have to stay responsible with your bigger values and not just avoid them altogether if they need some kind of attention).

This strategy fosters focus. As John Katzman, CEO of the EdTech giant Noodle, says, "The plural of focus is lack of focus." Meaning, you can't do everything well all at the same time. Try sticking to one thing and do it really, really well. You just might accidentally accomplish everything on your list.

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