3 Points, 3 Minutes, 3 TIMES The Output

If you haven’t heard of “The Rule of 3”, don’t sweat it because here’s a crash course.

In a nutshell if you want to simplify your life, cut WAY down on stress and become much more productive, The Rule of 3 is something you want to adopt.

FIRST, 3 things are the OPTIMAL number of items anyone’s brain can effectively juggle at once. Any more and we tend to get overwhelmed and discouraged. Any less and we tend to LOSE focus and are much more open to distractions. This isn’t make believe or theory. This is neuroscience baby, and I for one am NOT going to argue with that!

SECOND, following this plan your daily task list should have no more than 3 MUST DO’S on it, every single day. Your organizational method doesn’t matter. The rule doesn’t care if you use Evernote, your smartphone calendar, some time management app or good old fashioned pen and paper.

Personally, I write my task list (3 items) for the following day on a sticky note before I go to sleep at night. Actually helps me to relax, knowing that if ALL I GET DONE the next day are those 3 things, I’ll have had a solid, productive day.

Of course if you knock out those 3 tasks, there’s nothing stopping you from getting more done. But WHATEVER else life throws in your way, those 3 little items are your top priority for the day at hand.

THIRD, applying this rule to ANY content you create will dramatically boost the engagement level of your audience . Blog post, powerpoint presentation, chapters or modules for an info product. For each slide, chapter or post, the OPTIMAL number of main points to cover is three. This simple guideline will get your point across more effectively, to more people (remember, this is neuroscience…)

Of course you can expand on each of the three main points to cover, you guessed it, 3 sub points.

Have a look at this post where I set out to break down The Rule of 3. I’ve covered just 3 broad points that get the point across. And then expanded slightly on each. It’s really that simple and like all great “numbers” rules, can be extended to so many different areas of your life.

How do I know this stuff works? Well FIRST, there are a couple of pretty well known historical dudes known as Thomas Jefferson and Steve Jobs who applied The Rule of 3 to pretty much everything.

SECOND, a few moons ago I was a College Prof with the easiest subject to teach ever: wine appreciation. Yet I STILL managed to bore the heck out of my students until I started using The Rule of 3 in all of my presentations. The difference was literally night and day and took effect IMMEDIATELY.

THIRD, if you’ve checked out any of my info products you’ll see I stick pretty close to the rule with respect to the number of points I cover in any module.
See what I did there?

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