This is Ivy Lee.

He probably designed the most effective productivity technique in the history of mankind.

Here’s how.

In 1918, Charles M. Schwab, one of the richest Americans and an efficiency freak, asked Lee for a way to get his employees to be more productive.

Lee, in return, asked for 15 minutes with each of Schwab’s executives. Schwab could pay Lee what he felt it was worth after 3 months, he said.

During his 15-minute interaction, Lee charted out a simple method:

1. Write down the six most important things you need to accomplish. Do not write down more than six.
2. Prioritize those six items according to their importance.
3. Concentrate only on the first task. Work until you finish the first task before moving on to the second.
4. Approach the rest of your list in the same fashion. At the end of the day, move any unfinished items to a new list of six tasks for the following day.
5. Repeat this process every working day.

The result? Schwab didn’t just see an incremental improvement. The progress was so astounding that after 3 months, Schwab wrote Ivy Lee a check for $25,000 (almost $450,000 today).

Here’s how can you apply this in five minutes.

Each morning before you touch your smartphone, sit in complete silence. Think about six important tasks you want to achieve in the day, ones that need more than 10 minutes to work on. Allot an hour to each of them. Plan them to ensure that other urgent tasks don’t interfere.

Then begin working on the first task, and don’t move on to the next unless you’ve worked on this task for an hour.

For instance, your first hour could be to read a book. Give it an hour. The next could be a critical task at work. So spend an hour doing it. The third task could be something else which demands an hour of your attention.

(Disclaimer: To do undisturbed work at the workplace is impossible unless you know how to say no effectively.)

Here’s how I plan my day. ( I do it the night before, but you can do it in the morning.)

Following the Ivy Lee method will empower you to improve incrementally, around 1% each day. Doesn’t sound glorious, does it?

But by improving 1 percent each day, you don’t improve by 365 percent at the end of the year. Nope! You improve by a whopping 3,687 percent! That’s how the compound effect works.

Is that glorious enough now?

Can you imagine? An almost-4X improvement in yourself just by spending five minutes each morning!