How to run Top 3 priorities, daily non-negotiables and your schedule on one screen

Pick at most three Most Important Tasks for the day: that is your Top 3. Choose a set of non-negotiables small enough to finish. Put habits and scheduled hours on the same Today list, so the calendar can't push them out. Keep the people you need to contact visible next to that list, not in your priority slots. That is a capped, one-screen daily execution deck.

Sources: the Zen Habits MIT method (three MITs, done first) and Adam Waxman's Top 3. Also the Billion Habit FAQ ("habits and hours merged", "three priorities, not an endless backlog") and the homepage's one-screen surfaces.

Broken down:

1. Top 3 means three priorities. These are the outcomes that have to move today. The number is capped.
2. Non-negotiables are the deck's load. These are the recurring things that structure the day. You choose how many on purpose.
3. Today means habits plus hours. It is one list, in order, so recurring work sits next to your meetings rather than in a separate app.

Relationship touches stay on the same screen in their own section, so a call you owe someone doesn't take one of your three priority slots.

Pick at most three Most Important Tasks

Leo Babauta at Zen Habits describes an MIT as "the task you most want or need to get done today". He uses three: "the three things I must accomplish today". His key rule is to do them first, because if you put them off "you will get busy and run out of time to do them". He also suggests that at least one MIT should tie to a longer-term goal (Zen Habits).

Adam Waxman's Top 3 works the same way (Waxman):

1. At the start of the day, or the evening before, write down the three most important tasks.
2. Put the most important one at the top and circle it.
3. At the end of the day, cross out what you finished.

The "one thing that would make today successful" test

To choose priority #1, Waxman suggests asking: "What's one thing that if finished today would make today successful?" The question pushes you towards important work rather than whatever is most urgent. He also recommends estimating how long each task will take, and blocking time for it in your calendar with some buffer added.

Review your Top 3 each week (5–10 minutes)

Waxman ends each week with a short review. How many days did you finish the top task? How many days did you finish all three? That review is a habit you keep yourself. It is a different thing from Billion Habit's weekly score, which this guide doesn't try to explain or reverse-engineer.

"It depends" is true but not much help. Billion Habit's presets give three concrete levels (homepage):

These counts are separate from your Top 3. Every level keeps three priorities. What changes is how much of the rest of the day is set structure.

A practical rule of thumb (a heuristic, not a clinical rule): if you aren't finishing most of yesterday's non-negotiables on most days, move down a level before adding more. The aim is a deck you can finish. If it keeps outgrowing your days, it has turned back into a to-do list.

This is the problem with endlessly growing habit boards. Twenty rows in a Notion dashboard take effort just to maintain. One my.hab user says they "finally dropped notion" because checking in took 30 seconds instead of 10 minutes (my.hab). A capped deck avoids that cost from the start. You can begin with the Foundations preset, or ask the AI to draft a first deck and then edit it.

Yes. Billion Habit's Today list is described as "habits and hours merged" (FAQ).

The reason is practical. When recurring work lives in a tracker and meetings live in a calendar, the meetings usually win, because the tracker is out of sight. The FAQ explains the deck puts "your non-negotiables on the same screen as your schedule and the people you need to reach, so they don't get skipped when the calendar fills up."

If you still want your calendar events pulled in automatically, Pro includes Google Calendar sync (FAQ).

The same Tuesday on one Today list (illustrative example)

This is an invented example, not research data.

• 07:30: walk (non-negotiable)
• 09:00–11:00: deep work on the investor update (Top 3 #1)
• 11:30: hiring call (Top 3 #2)
• 14:00: board call
• 16:00: review the client proposal (Top 3 #3)
• 18:00: read for 20 minutes (non-negotiable)
• Relationship touches, in their own section: message your sister; reply to a former colleague

The day is still full. The difference is that the priorities, the hours, the recurring work and the people all appear in one ordered view.

"One screen" is already common in habit-tracker marketing. SevenGrid, for example, describes "Your whole week, on one screen" and "One screen for the day" for marking habits, with "No tabs, no dashboards". That is a calm view of the habits you've ticked.

A daily execution deck uses one screen for a different purpose: running the day, not just recording it. On Billion Habit, that screen holds:

• Top 3: three priorities
• Today: your day in order, with habits and hours together
• Relationship touches: people to reach
• Weekly score: whether the week held

That replaces a tracker, a to-do list, a calendar and a reminder app. According to the FAQ, a to-do list "grows without limit". The deck keeps relationship touches separate from Today, "so neither hides behind the other" (FAQ).

Billion Habit offers editable starting decks based on publicly reported days from founders and executives, including Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Indra Nooyi, Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffett (homepage). Use one as a structure to edit, not as a personality to copy.

The test is simple. Keep someone else's early start or reading hour only if it still leaves room for your three priorities. If their schedule pushes out your Top 3, it isn't a good fit for your day, however well it works for theirs.

Top 3 priorities

Three deliberate outcomes, chosen with the MIT and "one thing" tests above and done early if you can.

Today (habits and hours)

One list in order. Choose your preset level, Foundations (4), Momentum (8) or Maximum (11), and change it when your season changes.

Relationship touches

Same screen, separate section. The people you mean to reach stay visible without taking a priority slot. More: What are relationship touches?

Weekly score

The weekly score shows, at a glance, whether the week held. Billion Habit doesn't publish its formula, so none is given here. It works well alongside a five-minute Waxman-style Top 3 review that you do yourself.

Tonight, write down tomorrow's three priorities, four non-negotiables and the hours they fit into, and name one person to reach.

Open a Foundations deck, which is free forever with no account needed, or read the FAQ.