#14: Tame Your To-Do List with the OCN Method

We don't realize how many tasks that we have that are pulling our energy that we're, you know, chasing into a couple of hours of research here and there, those type of things, it's happening all the time. And so by cleaning this up, by using the OCM method, which we'll talk about today, it's a way to sort and filter your priorities so that you always know what to work on next.

I'm Bonnie Christine, and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast. Well, hello there. Welcome back to the Professional Creative Podcast. We are here on episode number 14 and I'm back with Lisa Jacobs. Hi, Lisa.

Hi, Bonnie. Thanks so much for having me.

You all got to meet Lisa in episode 13 and so if you missed that one, go listen to it. We talked about two concepts that have completely changed the inside of our team. Today we're going to talk about a method called Ocean. That is incredible. And Lisa is a creative entrepreneur. She is an author. She's also my integrator. So she works very much in my business going on two years. And her mindset is solely focused on processes and strategy and systems. And so it's something that she does like no one else. Lisa, give everyone a little bit of an introduction to you in case they did miss episode 13.

Okay, so I am, like Bonnie said, I started out as a creative entrepreneur and I was operating that successfully for about nine years until it got to the part where it really called me to step into the CEO visionary mode. And I wasn't, I, I didn't have the heart behind it. I had known and worked with Bonnie for several years. At that point, I left my business and went into the corporate world. And then at my next career transition, I joined Bonnie's team as the integrator. So I'm able To sit with Bonnie at a 30,000 foot view. And while she looks at the horizon as a visionary, I'm able to run company operations as the integrator. So I get to really watch for the workflow, as she said, the processes, the systems, and the things that we can do to make the machine run smoother and better and really satisfy everybody that we touch.

Incredible. We have made so much progress in the last couple of years with Lisa. Lisa, you and I just had our 10 year, like friendship anniversary.

Oh, is that right? No, I did not know that.

It's been 10 years. And it is such a joy to have you in my business every day and your brilliant brain. I've heard you talk about this OCN method a few times and I kind of thought, let's like, okay, that's cool. Until I recently saw you actually show the process. And it immediately clicked for me. I couldn't wait to get home to set it up. I've been using it for about 10 days. And so I'm going to let you explain to everybody what we're talking about.

Okay. This is the nature of this beast too. It's so simple that I. The only thing that was ever missing was the explanation of how it works and I just kept dropping it. So I'll tell you what had happened during my creative entrepreneurship years. I was just feeling overwhelmed. We talked about this in episode 13, the Daily Scramble. The exploding star. It's an intense energy to burn. And right around the time, probably mid career, a pivotal point, I had joined the board for my hoa. Like it's a, you know, your neighborhood board. And I was the social committee person, chairwoman of that board. And so I started going to monthly meetings. And in the monthly meetings in the board's notes, they organized everything into open, closed and new business. And I'll explain to you what that means in a minute. Because what I did from that point on is I came immediately home and in my business, I organized everything in open, closed and new. And then I started dropping this information with no explanation. There's a chapter about it in my book, your best year. A single. I'm sorry, no, I called it a chapter. It's a single paragraph in my book, your best year. And it's really just random because I kept saying it and it wasn't resonating with anybody. So I was like, this must just work for me. But the idea of it is that it's a way to organize your unfinished business. And it was coming very naturally to me. I realized the more That I mentioned it, some people, it did click and they, they went home and they organized all their business and open, closed and new. Well, but for the majority of people, it just wasn't making sense. And I would again, I would drop it left and right and people would ask a lot of questions. It was so simple, I was confusing people, but I just needed to explain it. And so I developed a program called the Fast Track Toolkit. It was the easiest thing I've ever created. It's just basically one hour of me explaining how to apply this technique. But we're going to go into what that means today. So essentially it's called the OCN method. OCN stands for open, Closed and New. And I want to break that down by category. I want you to also be thinking of it in columns, like a Kanban style. So that would be your basic Trello board, or you can organize a sauna or basically any project manager into Kanban style. But when I, every time I say open, closed and new, I want you to think about it as columns where all your projects and your tasks live. The first time I ever created it, it was simply on paper. I had so much to do, so much unsorted, unfinished business, that I would just create laundry lists of things that I needed to do in no particular order just to get them out of my brain and, and onto paper. And I think for the most part we don't realize how many tasks that we have that are pulling our energy, that are, that we're, you know, chasing into a couple of hours of research here and there, those type of things. It's happening all the time. And so by cleaning this up, by using the OCM method, which we'll talk about today, it's a way to sort and filter your priorities so that you always know what to work on next.

This solves so many issues. So let me first talk to the people who we lost when we mentioned Trello and Asana, because if you don't use any project management software, don't fret, you can totally do this exact process in a Google Doc or in a the Notes app on your phone. Or we're going to suggest that you keep it off of paper in a digital space that you can really reference and at any given moment. But for me, I do the same thing. Lisa. I have lists upon lists and some of them are digital, some of them are paper. You know, I love a planner. I have my own planner called the Flourish Planner. And the problem though, even with that is that at the end of A given week, the new ideas or the tasks that aren't fulfilled yet either get lost in the week or have to get transferred to the next week. And so I very much know the reasoning behind needing to get something that's nagging me in my brain, out of my brain and into a safe place where I can free up that mental bandwidth to focus on other things. Because I think everyone listening has those things that pop into your mind. They're not priority for today, but you are excited about them and they'll, they'll continue taking up that mental bandwidth for, for as long as you keep them inside your brain and not in a place where you can easily reference moving on.

Right. And also, how deflating is it when you're excited about your new ideas or you're excited about the work that you have to do, and then you find yourself moving it from week to week to week on your to do list because you're, you know, you're faced with deadlines, not realizing all of the places where your attention and your creation and your focus goes. And that, to me, that was also a big deal. I wasn't getting enough done. I had plenty to do, but I wasn't getting enough done. And you know the difference between those two, right?

Yes. Oh my goodness, yes. So I think this OCN method has built in, really honor, like some honor for your ideas, a safe place for your ideas, a safe place for your actual to dos, and then also some rewards as you move things around as well. So tell us more about open, closed and new.

Okay. Because yes, you're right, it's honorary and it is so rewarding. That's what I love so much about it. Okay, so I breezed over it already. It stands for open, closed and new business. Just a simple idea I learned at my board meeting. Basically we came in, we reviewed all open business each month, and we tried to think of what did we close. And that really, really resonated with me because like, like we're saying, you get lost in a lot of busy work, you'll have a lot of unfinished business on your plate. But yet, what can you say at the end of the week that you were able to produce? For many of us, it's not much. You know, our production comes in one big fail switch swoop at the end of a long giant period or a launch or something when another deadline hits up against the things that we have to do. But often we'll just get stuck with a lot of open, unfinished business. And so to define that open business is all pending active and unfinished tasks or projects, as well as anything consuming a lot of your energy. And that can be concerns or indecisions or something you're just worried about or you kind of are circling the drain. If you're thinking about open, closed and new in columns, then this is a priority column. Your open business unfinished business is going to be a priority column. It's the things you should be working with on because if you close them, it will provide maximum value for your business. So where your focus and commitment goes are the things that you can be closing and then providing value for your business. And so for that reason, because it's such a high focus and commitment, we need to question everything on it. Now, Bonnie, I'll ask this of you, but I know for me, I don't like more than three items on my open business. And I want to say it with this caveat that I'm going to ask you. I'm going to show, I'm going to tell you how to get started and you're going to get started and you're going to create an open business list that you will be surprised at how long it goes. It's probably 17 items or 29 items or 32. It's really going to go on for days because again, it's just the way that we sort of create a ground of ideas and idea generation and things we need to learn or something we need to do. We, we tend to create a lot of started business, but we don't follow through on all of it or, or we jump around a lot like multitasking. And so my goal is to always have no more than three. And the open business are the things you're working on right now with the intention of closing them. So actually, Bonnie, I'll come back and I'll ask you, I'll ask you more about your board in just a minute. So remember that your open business at the end of the day, after we're done sorting through these different columns is going to be the highest focus and commitment for your business. It is your landmark. It's the thing you're going to keep front and center for the week and make sure you move the dial on these things. The next column where that you're going to sort is closed. And this is projects or tasks that have reached 100% completion and will not need touched or tinkered with again anytime soon. This is an extremely high value column for your business. And if you set this up of your tasks and your projects and your to dos and all the items on your agenda, you're going to realize how infrequently you actually touch this column. And that was the scary thing for me. I wasn't getting things to completion. I was just touching everything a little bit every day, moving my energy or dispersing my energy in a million different directions. So by narrowing down the open business, you're able to then start to move that open business to closed business. And when you get it to close, you'll start to really feel the difference. And you're wondering, if your open business is a mile long and you want everything to get to closed, how are you going to whittle it down? How are you going to prioritize? And that brings us to the next column. That's new business. And New business is a party column. And you'll know it if you've ever been in business, because it's that place of fun ideas and shiny objects and next projects and new courses you want to take and all the fun things that you want to do and learn and be in your business. The new column is a really great space. The only problem is, is that it probably should not get as much focus and commitment as it's currently getting. And this is typically mixed in with all of your open and unfinished business. So if you have a lot of new business, what's likely happening is you're thinking of great new ideas and then you're going off and researching that for a few hours here and a few hours there. And while you're doing that, your priorities, the things that your business needs from you, not getting done. And so by moving some of that unfinished business to new, because you know it's for later or you know it's not in sequential order because there's something you have to do first or there's something you have to prioritize. By moving some of that unfinished business over to new, you create a little honorary storage area for it. It's there for next, but it's not for right now. And what I love about the new business column is that while your ideas are stored there, it doesn't mean you can't have new ideas about it or new insight that would be bad for business. While you're storing in a new business, you can keep ideas about its title or its research or things you might come across that belong in that, you can keep it. And so that's why for that, I love the project management software Trello. And we also really love Asana for the same reasons. You can just comment to yourself, you can leave comments, links, whatever you need. When it's time to open that business, when it's actually time to work on that, you can drag it over to open. And when you see that cardigan, all of your ideas, titles, whatever you thought about about that project will be stored there waiting for you. It'll be a really fun head start to getting to actual work on that. And When I was creating this OCN method for the FastTrack toolkit, I made a new column to go with the whole system and that's a no column. This helped me create a matrix so that I could track what where your focus and commitment should go and how to provide the best value. So if we're looking at the value side of the matrix, the highest value of all of these columns is your close column, because that is money in the bank. But the no column is almost equally as valuable because the no column is an honorary spot on your board for any new idea that after its incubation period in the new column, after its incubation and some further consideration, you realize that's a no for now. Or maybe you've even realized that's a no for never. It shows that you value your time, attention and resources. Again, it's a very high value column for your business. And when you store something there, it doesn't go away forever. You might realize the season has passed or that it's not the right time for that idea right now, but it doesn't delete it. Unless you choose to delete it so it can sit there and maybe you'll revisit it, but it's just not coming up soon. And if it was, we would store it in new and it's not open right now. And if it was, we would store it in open. So that is your basic description of the OCN method. The columns on whatever board you create, whatever list you want to make, would be open. That's your highest value focus and commitment. Closed. That's your highest value production column. New and no.

This makes so much sense. If you're having any issue at all envisioning it because you're listening to us, go on over to the show notes@profropriationalcreative.com because you'll be able to see how this is mapped out. It's truly the simplest process ever. And you'll also be able to get the FastTrack toolkit. One reason that I love using Trello for this. So we use Trello and like Lisa said, it's built out in columns and it's so rewarding to move so something from one column to the next. It's ridiculous. It's almost like social media because when you move something from one column to the closed column, it celebrates. Right, Lisa? This episode is sponsored by me. If you are ready to use your creative skills in a new way, I'm thrilled to share with you my all new free mini class called Start simple in Surface Design. It's called Start simple because, well, we're going to do just that. I'm going to guide you through every step you'll need in order to get started. In just five lessons that are under 20 minutes each, you'll learn how to take a simple sketch or painting and turn it into fabric or gift wrap using Adobe Illustrator. Now, don't worry, even if you've never used this program, I'll teach you everything you need to know to get up and and running. I'll even show you how you can use found objects like leaves or pieces of string so you don't even have to draw if you don't want to. I'll teach you how to create a custom color palette, design your very own repeating pattern, save your file like a pro, and order your very own gift wrap or fabric or wallpaper. Today, do you have an hour to learn an entirely new skill for free? If so, let's get started. Head on over and register@bonniecristine.com startsimple Again, that's bonniecristine.com startsIMPLE and Bonnie Christine is B O N N I E C H R I S T I N E I can't wait to see what you create in class. I'll meet you there.

Yes, and there's nothing more satisfying than watching your closed column grow and grow rapidly because you're just doing things one at a time or you're, you're prioritizing your focus. It's so satisfying.

It is. It really is. And then for me, I like having in the open column things that are, I was gonna say this very much feels like the top three. So we talk about the top three all the time. The top three things that if you got accomplished today, would make you feel go to sleep tonight knowing that you were accomplished. And so I like those top three in my open column, knowing that I may be dragging some things over there as well that aren't maybe a high priority, but they're necessary that I just need to kind of check off that day, but knowing that the top three, the three at the very top, are the things that will make me feel the Most accomplished if I get them done in a day. Of course, some of sometimes those things are multi day projects and keeping, keeping them there with kind of my progress is what helps. I also want to say how rewarding it is to have an empty open column because then you get to go to the new column, which is where the party is. And it's like a buffet of options of things that you can finally, you can finally put your attention to if you want. It feels like a reward in and of itself to have everything from your new column closed. And now you're ready to fill your new column with some things that you've been wanting, you've been itching to get at. I cannot contribute enough to what it means to know that you have things out of your brain and on paper. Because we spend so much of our time just trying to remember the ideas that we had or we'll worry in the middle of the night that we'll forget them if we wake up. So we get up and we write them down or whatever. And so just knowing that as soon as you have something pop up for you, you have a place to go put it, it's so freeing for your mind.

Bonnie, I love that. I love what you shared. And you know, I always call the new column an incubation. It's a party column, but it's also an incubator because just like you're saying when it, it's interesting and I don't know if this has happened to you yet, but you can come into your new column and you can find what seemed like the most tremendous idea and immediately say, no, I should not be doing that. And it, it eliminates false starts is what it does. Because when you have great ideas, you launch off on a lot of false starts. So if you can imagine how much time you can save just by elimina false starts and giving each idea or new project an incubation period. It's amazing.

That is so important. This method is also backed up by some evidence and a little bit of science, which I love. And so I want to let you be able to talk about what just from a human nature perspective. What are we capable of? What are distractions doing for us? And how OCN helps.

Yes, because I told you it was just this random, random thing that came to me after I had gone to a board meeting and I knew how impactful it was. And then I didn't understand if I just said it and you kind of heard it in the beginning. It's such a simple idea, but it Just takes a little explanation. And once that you get that explanation, it can be really valuable and you can really leverage it. But it's not necessarily how we're wired to think. So it helps reprogram all the things we talked about in episode 13, like the Daily scramble and the exploding star. And because of that, because of putting it together as a program, I was finding research that backed why this would make so much sense. And so one of the things that I loved figuring out was that studies have shown that the Average person has 50, 15 ongoing goals and projects, also known as open business, as we're describing it here, at any given time. And what this means is that the example would be a wait staff person who has 15 tables that they are managing on a floor at a restaurant. What they did was they tracked how much that person could keep in their short term memory. So if a wait staff person has 15 open tables and, and you ask them what did table 7 order, they will be able to tell you what was on the tab for table seven until they closed that table out and the people paid. Once that was closed, once the tab was closed, that waitstaff person's short term memory closes the tab as well. And it's now they have the capacity or the bandwidth to remember the 15 open tables. But the minute that the bill is closed, they can't remember what that table would have ate. And they probably can't even remember what they look like. They're keeping a running short term loop and we all are doing the same. And so what that leads is that those unfinished tasks and the things we keep looping in our short term memory cause an extreme amount of cognitive tension. And we will recall these items in our short term memory over and over again so as not to forget the same thing as a waitstaff person would do with the tables that they need to close. So when you're doing that in your business, you are maxing out your bandwidth on all of those unfinished open loops until you start to close them. Which is why this method would help, because you'll be able to knock them off one at a time. You'll reduce the amount of cognitive tension you're experiencing, and you'll also resist how our brains are wired to circle open loops until they've reached completion. If we reduce the number of open loops we have or we're focused on at any given time, then we are able to reprogram that wiring that will keep us circling and keep us having a lot of frustrating unfinished business around us. And then there's also The Pareto principle, which we know as the 8020 rule, and many of us in online business know this rule. It states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. And I've known this to be true. And we've all heard this about our businesses and where we're putting our attention and our focus, what products we're creating and what we are always looking for. The 20% of our efforts that are creating the 80% of our results. Before I put out the Fast Track toolkit, I had never heard this applied to your schedule. What this means is that for every 10 items on your to do list, only two of them are actually going to produce the results that you're looking for. The rest are possibly unnecessary, possibly easily delayed or deferred or delegated. But if you think of the 10 items on your to do list right now, only two of them, if we follow the law of the Pareto principle, only two of them are really going to be impactful. So we need to find and focus on those two tasks. And then. The last thing I love about the system is that most people, the majority of us can we call it 99% of us, postpone and put off their most important tasks to include your competition. So can we just talk about what happens if you focus all your efforts on the most impactful areas of your business and start getting it done?

What could happen that will light a fire under your bum? When I think about things like this, it's such a drive sometimes. Like, it's just the kick that you need to get into gear when you think about the time that other people are wasting. And what if I didn't? Is that just me? Is it sick?

No, I think like that too, and I love it. It's like that grind. Like, I'll wake up earlier, I'll do it more efficiently. I want to do it. It's. It's a competitive nature, though, for sure.

I'm actually like, give me something that's hard to figure out. And I'm like, oh, this is where my competition falls off. So I'm going to figure it out. Like, you know all this, anything that's tricky like that, I know that's where people fall off. And it's with this prioritized task list as well. Because our human nature wants to have the reward of crossing things off. And so we, by nature go to the easiest things first. It takes intention and it takes discipline to do your most difficult tasks first. But if you'll remember my episode about hacking your Willpower. What you can do is hack your willpower and do your most difficult tasks when you have the most focused energy. And you'll be legs above your competition.

Yes. And that's where we want you. It's there for you. Okay, so let's talk about how to get started because this is just, it's as simple as writing down what tasks we need on the board. And you can begin by asking what are all the things you have to do to keep your business running smoothly right now? What are the things that you're doing no matter what? Because that is sort of open business. If you are, let's say emailing a newsletter, you know that you need to get those email, those emails scheduled and set up and if you batch it, you'll do better. So maybe one of the things on your open business is batching the next six months worth of emails. You're asking what are the existing and new projects of on your plate? What are, what is something you are needing to release or launch into the world that you know you need to do it? This is really just a general bulleted progress or rapid log of anything that you can think of. You're making a running list. You're giving yourself at least a few days to think about every little thing that's demanding your time. I even put booknotes that I've, I've read a book, but I haven't fully absorbed it or taken it in or implemented it yet. I have a, a stack of those somewhere. I have, I have emails that I write to myself, note after note after note to consider or to think about or to put into its right place. Things, random things to organize that you're probably not thinking about right off the top, but are there and they're nagging little to do's. There's things you know you need to come back to or you want to come back to and you are just thinking about all the tasks, actions and activities that you need to do or regularly revisit or create. Right now it's all open and unfinished and it might feel a little bit unnerving the first time you see that list in black and white or on your project management software. Your list is going to be long and that's normal. Expect it to be. The longer it is, the better it is because you know you're getting those things out of your brain or your recurring to do lists, or the things you're transferring or deferring week to week and you're putting into a place and a system that is actually going to produce results. And that's what you're looking for. You're looking to maximize your results. So while your list may be long and while it might catch your breath a little bit because you're going to realize it's a little bit overwhelming how many things you're thinking about all the time, you can sort it and it's completely normal for it to be nice long. One of the other tips that I have in this is that if you find your life mixing in with your career or business quite a bit, if you find that also organize the pantry or whatever is trying to pop up, like clean the bathrooms, whatever is trying to pop up in your business list, you can separate this, you can do one for business, one for life, and keep those worlds separate so that again, for your, for your own sake, when you're working on the business, the business is the only thing that's popping up on your radar of things to give attention to. And then once you have that long list, it'll be, it'll start to make sense as you start to filter and sort it. Some of it will be apparently new business, some of it will be in sequential order. And you'll realize, well, I'm trying to work on step three when I certainly can't do that. And still until step one and step two are done and you'll easily be able to sort a few things over into new business. It will help you prioritize everything. And always you'll want to be putting top and center, front and center, the things that will create income and produce sales. And then you can then the more you filter, you'll start to realize what's a nice to have and what's an absolute must do. And you can really clean everything up and make it really pretty and make it really easy to read. And like I said, I aim for no more than three open business at a time. But you can do it, however, whatever makes sense and whatever feels good for you. The goal at the end of the day is that your closed business column becomes the longest column, it is the highest value, and it's an amazing and satisfying thing to build. And then the new business is going to store all your ideas and then also keep all of the links, random thoughts and research that's popping up for you along the way in that column. It's also going to serve as a great incubation tool so you don't head off on false starts. And then, like I said, your no column becomes the no for now.

So when I first heard about this Even after I saw how it looked on the back end, I still had some questions. And I sent Lisa a message. I was like, I don't know what project management software to use. I use Trello Asana. I know you use Trello. And she was like, it works on any of them. And so I need you to hear me on this. I got the template and I had my list set up within about 90 seconds. And I was madly typing in all of the things that I had, all of these open loops that I had in my brain. And so, again, you can use any system that you want. But some things that I love about using Trello for this is that these columns are drag and drop. So you can drag and drop things from one column to the next or in its own column to rearrange the order. But Lisa has this set up to where if you drag something to the closed column, this confetti shoots off and it celebrates for you, it's so much fun. And for the artists in the group, you can change the way it looks, too. You can change what the background of your columns look like. And it's just a visually very pleasing place that is so simple to use. There's no learning curve whatsoever, which I think is important when you're talking about managing your tasks and your priorities. And then the other thing that I love about it is that everything has. It basically creates a card. And the card can be a one liner, like, organize your pantry, or it can be like, take this class and. And you can open the card and have all sorts of things there if you need them. You can have text or links or images or files attached if you need them, but it's all contained in one card. And so it truly is mind mapping, if you think about it that way.

And I love the way that. I love the way that you've put it to use. I think that my favorite thing about it, and the reason that it's called the Fast Track toolkit, is that if you do what very few others are willing, which is to concentrate all your attention and willpower on the most important task first, you'll unlock the key to success faster than anybody. I mean, there's no. There's no quicker way to the extra mile than by putting front and center what matters most and getting it and just getting it done to. Like, what I said in the close column is that it doesn't require a ton of tinkering or revisiting or work, or you get it done to the 100% completion point, and you put it away knowing that it's complete. And that is just such a rewarding feeling. As you said, it deserves all the confetti. It's a beautiful place to get your work and your projects too.

So if you want this kind of one click template, you can head over to the Show Notes for today's episode and we'll link up the Fast Track toolkit. I believe it's $27. Is that right, Lisa?

That's right. It's $27.

It's so simple to use. You'll be up and running in no time. And we would love to see how it's working for you. Tell us how long it took you to get it up and running, tell us how it's feeling and how rewarding it is as well.

Yes, I think that we are big believers in luxurious downtime and really soaking in your life in and around your business. We talk about it all the time. Bonnie builds it into our company values. And it's really important to us that you're not just doing the busy work, but you are getting things accomplished. You're feeling good, you're feeling proud, and you're putting your best work out there. And so, Bonnie, thank you so much for having me for sharing this methodology. I appreciate it so much and it's just a pleasure to be here.

Lisa, thank you for joining us. Last Week's episode number 13 and today's number 14 is so valuable. It's the perfect setup for the next time we come together on annual strategy, which I believe will be dropping just after after the new year. Thank you so much, Lisa. And thank you for listening into another episode of the professional Creative podcast. We'll see you next week, same time, same place. Bye for now.