🎫 🍫 A Golden Ticket to Prioritization with Willy Wonka

Ritual 03: Productivity Tools, Mindsets and Recommendations

If you had an extra hour in your day, how would you spend your time? Instead, what if you could get more from the time you already have? 

That’s the golden ticket! Even Willy Wonka would likely agree:

"Time is a precious thing. Never waste it."

Imagine being Charlie, the children and their chaperones in the iconic musical fantasy film, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, based on Roald Dahl’s famous book.

As they enter Wonka’s top-secret Factory with its chocolate river, gummy bear trees and lollipop flowers — the thrill of discovery and excitement of choices surrounds them.

Now, fast forward and apply the world of work to this candy paradise.

With so many options — chocolate (the project that makes you happy), gummies (the recurring to-do item that never ends), lollipops (the last-minute request stuck onto a nearly completed proposal) and more — how do you choose without getting a tummy ache, overwhelmed or turning into a giant blueberry like Violet?

One way for solving this sweet challenge is prioritization. When you can’t try everything or complete it all, developing a ritual for addressing what needs to be accomplished by when can help. 

Both my sweet tooth and curiosity for prioritization processes are quite similar. I like to browse, sample and choose my favorites. Along the way, I’ve discovered helpful tools from industry experts, mindsets from productivity thought-leaders and recommendations from leaders featured on The Switchboard, along with a few helpful hints from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory too.

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🧰 Tools

📔 #1 Written

Charlie’s golden ticket to win a tour of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and the prize — a lifetime supply of chocolate was hidden in a “regular Wonka Bar,” not the Scrumdidilyumptious bar. This is a reminder that the classic style, even though it might seem plain, can help you become a winner.

Pen and paper are that quintessential option, but the Bullet Journal comes with a sweet twist. With an index and a dotted grid notebook of numbered pages, it organizes a notebook like a filing cabinet for ideas, to-do lists and planning. Studying this technique made me rethink the way I’ve been taking notes for years. Devoted fans of this system are referred to as Bullet Journalists because there’s a serious craftsmanship quality to it. 

Created by Ryder Carroll, he’s authored a book to guide anyone (perfect penmanship not required) through the process of “the mindfulness practice disguised as a productivity system” to help you “track the past, order the present and design the future.” He shares the struggles he experienced that led to its creation and the science behind it: 

We often cobble together ways to organize ourselves on the fly. A little of this app; a little of that calendar. Over time, this results in an unwieldy productivity Frankenstein of Post-its, various apps, and email…The act of writing by hand draws our mind into the present moment on a neurological level, unlike any other capturing mechanism. 

💻 #2 Digital 

Like the numerous creative candy inventions of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, there are many tempting digital productivity tools to choose from when deciding your prioritization method. These four tools really stood out to me in my research: 

🦄 Asana: Take a project management approach to your to-do list with this tool that integrates with other apps, provides different views and offers lots of collaboration so you can invite your version of the Oompa Loompas to join you. There’s a course catalog with recorded and live virtual events, templates and a magazine for productivity best practices. Consider evaluating your approach with this 20-day productivity challenge. Explore their magazine, The Workback, for insights on clarity, leadership, and more.  

✅ Todoist: This app's tagline is to help you “become focused, organized, and calm.” Take a quiz to find out your productivity style or explore their hub of resources, complimented by the newsletter, Ambition & Balance.

📈 Notion: This all-in-one workspace functions as a seamless database that brings “your wiki, docs, & projects together.”

Jeremy Caplan

provides an excellent overview of it on

Wonder Tools

here. There’s also a community of Notion enthusiasts who create templates and training videos, such as Marie Poulin. It’s also great for teams.

⌚Bonus — Slash: While exploring Wonder Tools, I discovered this app that helps you focus and track how much time tasks take. I appreciate this method because it keeps you on track and actually measures how long a project takes for future planning. How many times have you said, “Oh this will only take me 15 minutes” and it turns into 4 hours? 

🍭 Mindsets

When discussing his candy creations, Willy Wonka gives insights into the operations:

“Invention, my dear friends is 93 percent perspiration, 6 percent electricity, 4 percent evaporation, and 2 percent butterscotch ripple.”

This formula totals 105%, but it doesn’t matter to Wonka because he’ll go over and beyond to get the recipe right. His secret ingredients, including butterscotch, set Wonka’s Chocolate Factory apart with a unique approach, just as the mindsets of great prioritization philosophies follow their own special formulas.

I’ve selected three mindsets that stood out to me in my research, and encourage you to find what resonates with your style.  

🍬 #1 The Eisenhower Matrix 

Sahil Bloom of The Curiosity Chronicle writes about President Eisenhower who was known for this secret productivity weapon:

A 2x2 visualization tool that forces you to differentiate between the urgent and the important in order to prioritize and manage your time more effectively.

🍳#2 The Action Method

In Making Ideas Happen, entrepreneur Scott Belsky outlines the Action Method which believes that everything should be approached as a project. Every project can be broken down into three steps: Action Steps, Backburner Items and References.

✏️ #3 Gettings Things Done (GTD) 

The team at Todoist created this excellent summary and graphic of David Allen’s classic book, Getting Things Done, and movement with the same title:

💡 Recommendations

Many of these philosophies above are interwoven into the recommendations below from leaders featured on The Switchboard. What would you add to this list as you create a ritual for prioritization? 

Focus on Business Goals | Jesse Comart 

Prioritize the projects that have biggest impact on your business goals. Too often, marketers focus on strategies or tactics just because other marketers are doing it. Instead, get really close to the core revenue-driving part of the business – could be sales, product, engineering – and prioritize helping them solve problems. Not only will it become easier to deprioritize the frivolous tasks, but you’ll quickly become part of that revenue engine. 

Unblock the Work | Roberta (Bertie) Thomson

No one likes a leader who slows everyone down. Always focus your time first on the decisions that affect the most teams and unblock the most work. 

Remove, Delegate or Pause | Christine Tao 

Start with the end in mind — what outcomes are you trying to drive this week, this month, this quarter? Then look at your calendar and examine whether your activities are getting you closer or further to those goals. If they are not, figure out whether they should be removed, delegated or paused. 

Block off 30 minutes | Elizabeth Rasberry 

When prioritizing tasks, I like to make a list of everything I need to do and then order them based on urgency and importance. I like to block off 30-minute increments to try to make a dent in the list and focus on one thing versus multitasking and not getting anything to completion.

Identify the Big Rocks | Camilla Boyer 

My favorite tip for prioritizing at work is the big rocks metaphor. If you try to put the sand and pebbles (e.g. the busy work) in first, there will never be room for the big rocks (ie the important, impactful stuff). But if you put the big rocks first, you can fit the sand and pebbles in around it. I start every day by identifying what my big rocks are that day, and then fit in as much remaining admin as I can once those bigger items are complete. 

Make Your Time and Meetings Matter | Helen Kupp 

Our Future Forum research showed that people not only want flexibility in where they work, but flexibility in WHEN and HOW they work together. To enable that, we have to go back to the basics of effectively prioritizing our day and not fall into habits of being in back-to-back meetings all day, whether in-person or virtually.

My tip for making meetings matter again: As you take a look through your calendar each week, ask yourself two questions:

1. Do we need to meet live for this? Is this time used for the 4D's - discussing, debating, deciding, or developing our people? If not, can we cancel & share information differently.

2. And for all other meetings, how can we be more asynchronous - that might look like brainwriting ideas or feedback in advance of a live discussion.

Focus on the Big Picture | Brie Wolfson

Don't lose the forest for the trees. The big picture matters!

Do Your Hard Work First | Jacob Bank

Do your hardest and most important task at the time when you feel most energized and productive.

Lean into Lists | Cath Anderson

I’m a big fan of keeping a physical notebook for this (so not digital) - and use lists to organize my lists, each at a different level/degree of granularity. For example, I have a list of to-dos for the day/week/quarter and year. Things sometimes overlap or jump from list to list before getting checked off. I often challenge myself to look at items to see if there are any synergies to combine or duplicative items that make something redundant. Using lists, I can ruthlessly prioritize based on the most urgent items on hand while maintaining the longer-term deliverables. 

Conquer the Quick |  Allison King

Depending on the urgency of the work, I will often tackle items that are easy to handle (“low-lying fruit”) before approaching matters that are more challenging. This can help me cross off my “to-do” list and give me a sense of accomplishment.

I hope that you’ll find your golden ticket to prioritization by tapping into recommendations and insights in this article and adding your own (licorice) twist on the basic principles of pure imagination with a healthy helping of chocolate from Willy Wonka. 

This article is part of a series on Rituals. Catch up on past editions: January’s Annual Report and February’s Growth & Learning. 

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