Build Your 20-Minute List
The list you pull out in a dead 20 minutes, sorted by whether your brain is online or not.
You get 20 minutes back all the time and you spend it scrolling.
Appointment runs late. Meeting ends early. Train's delayed. You get handed a clean 20 minutes and you open Instagram, because deciding what to do with 20 minutes takes longer than 20 minutes.
That's not a discipline failure. It's a decision cost. You have no list of things that fit in the gap, so you default to the thing that requires no decision at all.
I keep mine in my notes app. It's the reason I'm never quite as behind as I feel.
The prompts
1. Start here
Pulls every small win out of your big messy projects.
Here's everything I'm working on: [list or describe it]. Break out every piece that could be finished in under 20 minutes on my phone alone.
2. Go deeper
Sorts by whether you need a working brain.
Now split those into ones that need real thinking and ones I could do while tired or distracted, and label which is which.
3. Bonus
Finds the one that compounds.
Tell me which single 20-minute task, done 3 times this week, would make the biggest difference by Friday.
Bonus: Make it yours
Ask for a version you can screenshot. A list you have to go and find is a list you won't use.
Do this today: build it once and put it where you'd normally open Instagram.
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The tools behind the work.
The tools that have earned a permanent spot in my workflow.
Claude
Anthropic's flagship product and the tool that almost every resource on this site is designed for.
ManyChat
The easiest way to build automated Instagram DM flows, comment replies and lead capture without coding.
Planoly
My go-to for planning, scheduling and visually mapping out social content across platforms.