Timeboxing
Assigning a fixed block of time to a task, rather than leaving it open-ended, so the task fills the time you gave it instead of however long it wants.
Productivity concepts, explained
Most of these have a name because someone worked out something real about how attention and time actually behave, then gave it a label so it could be talked about. This page collects the ones ka-do's own thinking leans on most — grouped by what part of the day they touch — each with a plain-English definition and a link to the full argument.
Planning
Time blocking vs. to-do lists
Scheduling tasks directly onto your calendar instead of a separate list, so ‘when’ gets decided at the same time as ‘what.’
The 12-Week Year
Treating twelve weeks, not twelve months, as your effective “year” for goals — short enough to stay urgent, long enough to finish something real.
Plan tomorrow tonight
Deciding tomorrow's plan the night before, while today's context is still fresh, instead of starting the day by first figuring out what the day is.
Capture
The capture problem (cognitive offloading)
Getting a task out of your head and into a system the moment it occurs to you, so your brain stops using working memory as a to-do list.
Trusting your system
Building enough trust in your capture system that your brain actually lets go of a task once it's written down, instead of quietly holding onto it “just in case.”
Attention
Parkinson's Law
Work expands to fill the time available for it — a task with no real deadline will almost always take longer than the same task given one.
The two-minute rule
If a task takes less than two minutes, do it immediately instead of adding it to a list — the overhead of tracking it costs more than doing it.
Structured procrastination
Using the urge to avoid your most important task to get genuinely useful lower-priority work done, instead of doing nothing at all.
The shutdown ritual
A short, repeatable routine at the end of the working day that draws a clear line under it, so unfinished work stops following you into the evening.
Prioritisation
The Eisenhower Matrix
Sorting tasks into a four-box grid of urgent versus important — a classic prioritisation method, and one with a real limitation worth understanding before you build a system around it.
Pick your top three tasks
Choosing just three tasks to count as “done” for the day, so priority isn't spread across an entire list competing for your attention equally.
Keep a done list
Recording what you actually finished, separately from what's still open, as evidence of a working day rather than a score to chase.