Hello friends,

This year, I started tracking my daily plans and learning notes in a Bullet Journal. My last BuJo experiment in 2018 lasted a few weeks before I gave up on it. That may have been because I over-engineered it instead of keeping it simple.

This is something many of us tend to do.

Instead of sticking to our plan, we try to do more than we intended. We keep stretching our tasks and goals until we burn out.

This illusion of time is something I see often with my clients. At 9:30 pm, they pick up work they could not fit into the day. When they first listed the task, they mentally slotted it into a future moment of peace and quiet, usually 9:30 pm.

“Oh, my inbox is overflowing. I’ll spend a few hours over the weekend clearing it,” which quietly turns into eight.

We take on too much because we believe we can always stretch the workday into the night, the weekend, or the commute, working on laptops or replying to emails on our phones.

This time, I kept my BuJo simple. I list my work tasks in teal pen and other tasks in red. I am allowed to list only what fits on one side of an A5 page. In fact, not even the full side. About three quarters of it, because I need the remaining space for notes.

The physical space creates a constraint I have to respect.

When I break down a larger task, like writing my newsletter, it often takes up half the page. It is not one task, but a series of eight. No wonder that when I write my newsletter, it takes up half a day, and I spend the rest of the day recovering from the mental effort.

The BuJo made that effort visible to me in a way an Excel sheet or any other infinite scrolling app never could.

Today, we’ll explore one of the key principles of Focus First Planning: limiting decisions by protecting what needs focus.

Enjoy the read!
Siri

The 25–5 Rule

There’s a story Warren Buffett tells about a conversation he once had with his long-time pilot, Mike Flint.

Buffett asked Flint to write down everything he wanted to accomplish in his career and life. Not just the sensible goals, but the ones that genuinely mattered. Flint came back with a list of twenty-five.

Buffett then asked him to circle the five that mattered most. That part was harder.

Once Flint had done it, Buffett looked at the list and asked a simple question: “What are you going to do with the other twenty?”

Flint said the five would be his main focus, but the rest were still important. He planned to work on them when he had time, alongside the top five.

Buffett told him this was exactly the problem.

The insight wasn’t about ambition. It was about protection.

The greatest threat to what matters most is rarely distraction by things that do not matter. It is distraction by things that almost matter.

What it Means to Choose

There is a reason the Focus First Daily Planner limits focused tasks to five: one priority and four important tasks.

Ideally, these five align with your top priorities in life. When daily actions reflect what matters most, work and life tend to feel more settled and satisfying.

Will the nagging sense of “I need to do more” go away? Perhaps not. Focusing on some things means not focusing on others. A sense of missing out often remains.

With consistent daily, weekly, and monthly reflection, many of my clients find they can lower the volume on that fear of missing out (FOMO).

This is often the first thing that comes up in our reflection (coaching) sessions. We work with it mindfully, listening for what the FOMO is pointing to and deciding an appropriate response.

Try this

Do the 25–5 exercise for your life and choose your priorities for 2026.

Use the Focus First Planner, if you downloaded it last week, and notice after a week whether your daily actions align with your yearly priorities.

Siri’s Pick

I’ve been reading a beautiful book by Fredrik Backman, a sensitive writer whose work moves me. My Friends brings friendship into the spotlight. It explores grief, love, adventure, learning to trust, and the idea that family is who you choose, not where you are born.

Bye for now.

Siri 🌱🌀