There are so many productivity techniques out there, and many of them can feel pretty intense. They can involve turning your to-do’s into dates, creating elaborate matrices to prioritize your tasks, or listing everything you need to do before rating it on a subjective scale. All of that takes time. The “7 Minute Life” framework, on the other hand, only takes a few minutes a day and is an effective way to plan what you need to do and stay motivated. Here’s how it works.

This concept comes from Allyson Lewis, a productivity guru who founded 7 Minute Life to help people feel engaged in their work and interests. Her technique can be applied to a variety of things, such as unfinished tasks or achieving certain goals, but is also broad enough for everyday use.

Essentially, you spend seven minutes each morning and evening making decisions about your day and reflecting on what you did and what you need to do tomorrow. The idea is that you choose to consciously focus on those two seven-minute intervals, and use that time to make informed choices about how to spend the rest of your day. Lewis' technique is based on the fact that there are only 1,440 minutes in a day, and 14 minutes make up just 1% of that time. The rest of your time, if you plan it right, is entirely yours, so you should use that 1% of planning and reflection time to prioritize your tasks and reflect on how it all went.

Lewis offers courses, coaching, and tools to help you turn the 7 Minute Life into a full-blown lifestyle, but you can start small. Each morning, set a timer for seven minutes and think about what you need to get done. You can use this time to create a to-do list and structure your day based on the size and resource requirements of individual tasks. In the evening, set the timer again and spend those seven minutes reflecting on what went well and what didn’t, and what you learned and can implement the next day, as if you were doing an after-action review.