You might not want to hear this.

I debated whether to tell you.

But I’ve never shied away from saying it like it is.

Perhaps that’s because I’m Dutch—we’re famous for being direct. Or perhaps it’s that I secretly enjoying needling people a little. Either way, I’m going to tell you.

Recently, I sent out a little survey, asking people what they struggle with the most.

Here’s one guy’s answer:

So I asked, “what’s stopping you from dealing with that?”

His reply:

That’s my emphasis there: he cannot drop any of those.

My man! Who told you it’s possible to be a great father to four kids, to run three companies, to renovate your house (houses? offices?), and to invest in maintaining your relationship—all at the same time?

It simply isn’t possible.

I can sit by your side and coach you all day long for 90 days straight.

You’d have your priorities straight. You’d have wonderful systems in place. You wouldn’t be forgetting things. You’d be answering your emails in a timely fashion. And you’d be getting a little more of the right work done.

But you still wouldn’t be Superman.

Systems help, and I can teach you systems, but there’s a limit.

I don’t want to pick on Mr. X too much. There’s a bit of Mr. X in all of us. It’s a cultural phenomenon: we’re expected to be on top of everything, all the time.

Social media and its portrayal of our friends’ lives as perfect doesn’t help—although I sense that more and more of us are clueing into this. Even if you know social media is distorting your sense of what’s normal, though, it’s hard to fix. We have such warped expectations of what 24 hours can deliver.

Anyway, the point is:

Mr. X can’t finish his to-do list because he made it way too long.

I can’t say it any simpler than that.

There’s a reliable way for him—and for you—to finish that to-do list, every single day: make it shorter.

Make your to-do list so short that you can easily complete all the tasks on it, without stress or hurry. Then leave the rest for tomorrow. Or, if tomorrow is a Sunday, for the day after tomorrow. Or the day after that.

See? I told you you weren’t going to want to hear this.

Chances are, you’re like Mr. X. You don’t want to drop anything. You might even say that you can’t drop anything.

If that’s your attitude, though, you’ll never feel at ease.

If you want to feel less overwhelmed and more at ease, you’re going to have to accept that things take longer than you want them to. You’re going to have to be okay with steady progress, over time. No magic.

Festina lente, wise Romans said. Make haste slowly.

So Mr. X is going to have to drop things. And you probably will, too.

What to drop, though? Given that you can’t do everything today, what does deserve your precious time and attention? What should get a “yes” and what should get a “no”?

This is where your personal productivity system comes in.

That sounds fancy. It just means:

Think about what you’d like to do, then choose. Organize, then prioritize. And then get on with priority #1.

Maybe today, priority #1 is to spend time with your kids. Or maybe it’s to handle a dozen little tasks related to the bathroom renovation. Or maybe it’s to lock yourself in a room for hours and hours, without being disturbed, banging out quality work—until suddenly you realize that you’re ravenous and really need to use the bathroom.

Want to feel at ease? You have to do two things.

First, organize and prioritize.

If you don’t do that, you’ll always be second-guessing yourself and you’ll never feel satisfied with what you’re actually doing.

Second, define what success looks like.

Because how can you be satisfied if you have nothing to measure against?

And truth be told, there’s a third step. At some point, we have to go beyond “productivity”. That’s where the real magic lies…

But we’ll talk about that some other time.