Last year I read a great book by Randi Zuckerberg, the lesser known of the Zuckerberg’s (she makes some great jokes about that in her book). It was called Pick 3. 

In the book, she talks about how we only have so much time in a day to complete things. When we try to take on too many things, we end up doing a halfway job at most of them, thereby feeling in fact, less successful than if we had just maintained our focus on three things. She believes all daily tasks and events fall into one of the following categories: 

  • Fitness
  • Work
  • Family
  • Friends
  • Sleep

If you were to get up, work out, go to work, spend quality time with your friends and then more quality time with your family AND get 8 hours of sleep all in one day, you’re likely living in an alternate universe where you have 40 hours in a day. 

Instead, she believes you should lay your day out to focus on just three of those things each day. So, maybe an effective day means: 

6:30 a.m. Get up and work out
9 a.m. Work
9 p.m. Sleep

You may have gotten some family time in there or drinks with your friends, but you likely didn’t feel like you gave 100% in one of those areas.

Here’s my take on it: You probably can squeeze four of those into a day IF you’re super focused and efficient with your time. But, ever since I read that book, I think about my day in that sense. If I pick (in advance) the three things I’m going to be most focused on that day, and then I get to do one of the other things, that’s a bonus! 

Spending 3-4 hours of quality time with friends and family may not be able to happen every day, but if it’s not, I hope you’re getting plenty of sleep, plenty of work done and plenty of time for fitness. So, here’s what it comes down to. If you’re not getting a ton of quality time with family during the week, that may just be the stage of your life you’re in right now. But, if that’s the case I hope you’re killing it at a healthy, sleep-filled lifestyle where you’re getting tons of work done.

If you were to go off that book, what would be your 3 focuses today?