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How Adobe’s chief product officer makes time for what’s important

To make sure he tackles everything on his to-do lists, Adobe chief product officer Scott Belsky has come up with a rigid system.

How Adobe’s chief product officer makes time for what’s important

[Illustration: Pietro Soldi]

BY Yasmin Gagne1 minute read

To make sure he tackles everything on his to-do lists, Adobe chief product officer Scott Belsky has come up with a rigid system. Here’s how he gets it all done.

“I use Notion to keep two to-do lists, one with everything that’s actionable (tasks that start with a verb go there), and one that has three to five things that matter most to me at any one time. The lists compete with each other, and I always make sure that I devote more time to the second list. I do a regular calendar audit to make sure I’m focusing on the right things. I don’t say yes to something that’s in three months that I wouldn’t say yes to for tomorrow. Everyone suggests that there are ‘switching costs,’ [that] when you find a productivity tool that works for you, you stick to it forever. I actually think there are ‘switching benefits,’ in the sense that whenever you use a new tool, it forces you to do spring-cleaning through your old tool to clear out all the old stuff and to also re-factor the way that you prioritize and manage information. And so when I migrated from Evernote to Notion, and when I migrated from Microsoft To Do to this new product called TickTick, it actually forced me to rethink how I organize and go through old categories that I should just get rid of.” —As told to Christopher Zara

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