The Pay-Yourself-First Time Method
Claim time for what matters before urgent demands consume it all
Borrowed from personal finance, this framework applies the pay-yourself-first principle to time. Just as saving money only works when you set aside a portion before spending, meaningful work and personal priorities only happen when you claim time for them before addressing the urgent. Burkeman synthesizes advice from graphic novelist Jessica Abel, who spent years failing to make time for her illustration work by trying to tame her to-do list first, and the management concept of limiting work in progress to a maximum of three items. The method combines upfront time claiming with strict work-in-progress limits and the discipline of serializing major projects rather than juggling them all at once.
- If you wait until urgent tasks are done to start meaningful work, you will never start
- Limiting work in progress to three items forces completion rather than perpetual half-progress
- Serializing big projects produces more finished work than parallelizing them
- Identify your pay-yourself-first activityChoose the one activity that matters most to you but consistently gets crowded out by urgent demands. This might be creative work, relationship time, exercise, strategic thinking, or any pursuit that you reliably defer in favor of more pressing obligations.
- Claim time at the start of each day or weekBlock non-negotiable time for your chosen activity before scheduling anything else. Work on it during the first hour of the day, or schedule recurring calendar blocks labeled as meetings with yourself. The time must be claimed before demands arrive, not carved out from whatever remains.
- Limit work in progress to three itemsCap the number of active projects at three. All other incoming work must wait in a queue until a slot opens through completion or deliberate abandonment. This prevents the comfortable illusion of progress on many fronts while actually finishing nothing.
- Serialize major projectsFocus on one big project at a time and see it through to completion before starting the next. Resist the anxiety-driven urge to start multiple projects simultaneously. The satisfaction of finishing will gradually make the anxiety of a long queue feel more tolerable.
For years, Abel tried every productivity technique to find time for her illustration work alongside her teaching and other obligations. Nothing worked because the to-do list was inexhaustible. She finally accepted that the time would never appear on its own and began drawing for one to two hours every morning before addressing any other tasks. Some emails went unanswered longer. Some administrative tasks slipped. But her creative output, which had been stalled for years, resumed.
Jessica Abel, a graphic novelist and creativity coach, tried for years to find time for her illustration work by getting through her to-do list first. She eventually realized the to-do list would never be clear and adopted the personal finance principle of paying yourself first: she began drawing for an hour or two every day before doing anything else, accepting the consequences of neglecting other tasks. Burkeman combined her insight with Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry's Personal Kanban system, which limits work in progress to three items, and the classic advice to work on your most important project during the first hour of each day.