February 20, 2026

My Daily OS

A coaching student recently asked how I organize my day.

Great question!

Here’s the TL;DR:

My daily operating system is a loop where I check three inboxes in order:

1. The lock screen on my phone (emergencies)
2. My calendar for today (appointments)
3. The Today list in my task tracker (tasks)

Why this order?

Urgency.

High urgency first (e.g., family emergency).

Then medium urgency (I promised someone I’d show up at a specific time).

Then low urgency (anything I could work on today).

For me, an “emergency” is anything I would cancel a client meeting for and feel justified -e.g., “My wife was in a fender bender. We need to reschedule.”

I keep my calendar rules clean and simple. I only put in:

1. Appointments with other people
2. Related blocks (drive time, prep time, etc.)
3. Blocks to prevent booking (birthday, personal day, etc.)

Everything else goes in the to-do list.

A task appears in TODAY when its Radar Date is less than or equal to today.

How do I pick what to do next?

Gut instinct.

Which is basically a mix of:

• my energy level
• available time before next appointment
• the importance of the task

What if I don’t feel like doing anything on the list?

I do whatever else I feel like doing (e.g., take a walk, go to lunch, play guitar, dork around with AI)

Here’s the thing...

The key piece of this is keeping all your tasks in your to-do list app.

ALL OF THEM!!!

Don’t put tasks in your calendar or buried in a project folder or in Slack or in your email on sticky notes or anywhere else besides your task tracker.

Why?

Because if your tasks live in five places, you don’t have a productivity system.

You have a scavenger hunt.

Yours,

—J

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