Alright, let’s talk about this Rob Silva method I tried out recently. Heard the name floating around, sounded like some kind of productivity or maybe a mindset thing. Decided, why not, give it a whirl.
So, first thing I did was just try to understand what the core idea was. Didn’t find a single official book or course, more like bits and pieces people mentioned online. Seemed to boil down to simplifying how you look at your tasks or maybe your day. Okay, fair enough, I can get behind simplicity.
I started by getting a plain notebook, nothing fancy. The gist I picked up was to physically write things down, get them out of your head. So, every morning, I grabbed my coffee and just dumped everything I thought I needed to do onto the page. Didn’t matter how small or big, just wrote it down. Felt a bit like a brain dump, honestly.
The Silva Sorting Hat?
Now, the next step, as I understood it from piecing things together, was some kind of sorting. Not complicated like those fancy matrix things. More like, look at the list and pick maybe ONE thing, the most important thing, that needed doing. Not three, not five. Just one. Put a big star next to it.
Then, look again. Pick maybe two or three other things that would be good to do, but not world-ending if they slipped. Put a simple checkmark next to those.
- Starred Item: The MUST DO.
- Checked Items: The SHOULD DO.
- Everything else: The COULD DO (or maybe drop?).
That was basically it for the planning part. Took maybe ten minutes each morning.
Putting it into Practice
Then came the actual doing part. The rule I set for myself, based on this Silva idea, was simple: focus only on the starred item until it was done. Ignore the checked stuff, ignore email, ignore everything else. Just hammer away at that one task.
I gotta say, the first couple of days felt weird. My brain kept wanting to jump to easier, quicker things on the list. Resisting that urge was tough. I’d finish the starred item, sometimes by lunch, sometimes it took most of the day.
Only after the starred item was complete did I even look at the checked items. If I had energy and time, I’d tackle one or two. If not, they rolled over to the next day’s brain dump.
What happened?
Well, after about two weeks of doing this consistently, I noticed something. I was actually finishing those big, important tasks that I usually procrastinated on. You know the ones, the hairy projects that always seem too daunting to start. By forcing myself to pick just ONE and focus, I made progress.
The downside? Some of the smaller, ‘should do’ tasks piled up a bit. Things like quick admin stuff or replies sometimes got pushed back more than usual. And if I picked the wrong ‘most important’ task for the day? Yeah, that day felt less productive overall, even if I finished the starred item.
It’s not a magic bullet. It’s really just a forced prioritization method. Very simple, maybe too simple for complex project management. But for a personal way to cut through the noise and make sure the truly important stuff gets attention? Yeah, I found it pretty effective. I’m still kind of using a modified version of it – the single starred item focus really stuck with me.
