Why I Ditched Every Productivity System for My Daughter's Abacus

Late night, long task list, feeling overwhelmed—sound familiar?

It was another one of those nights. Kids finally asleep, laptop open, staring at a task list that seemed to mock me. Seventeen items, all labeled "urgent," all screaming for attention.

I'd tried everything: GTD, Pomodoro, 7 Habits, countless todo apps. They all worked great—until real life happened. Until clients had emergencies, deadlines shifted, and my carefully prioritized lists turned into chaos.

That's when I spotted my daughter's wooden abacus on the desk.

The Problem Every Founder Knows

You know that moment when you open your task manager and immediately feel paralyzed? When every item feels urgent but you can only pick one?

The issue isn't the tasks themselves. It's that every productivity system treats priority like it's absolute. High, medium, low—meaningless labels when everything feels high priority.

But priority isn't absolute. It's relative.

What an Ancient Tool Taught Me About Tasks

Watching my daughter play with her abacus, something clicked. Each bead's value depends entirely on where it sits. Move a bead from the ones column to the tens column, and suddenly it's worth ten times more. Same bead, different position, different value.

What if tasks worked the same way?

Instead of assigning arbitrary priority levels, what if I positioned tasks relative to each other within categories that actually matter in my life?

This became Suanpan—the abacus method for task management.

How It Actually Works

The Setup (2 Minutes)

Create three columns—the three main spheres of life:

Work: Everything business-related
Family: Personal and family responsibilities
Self: Health, growth, the stuff that keeps you sane

The Method: Position Over Priority

Within each column, tasks are positioned top to bottom by relative importance:

Top: Must-do today items
Middle: This week's focus
Bottom: Someday items

The breakthrough? A task's importance comes from where it sits relative to other tasks in that category, not from some abstract priority label.

The Workflow (Dead Simple)

Start with the topmost task in your Work column
Complete it or push it forward as far as possible
Move to the next task down, or jump to the top of Family column
Repeat

No decision fatigue. No "what should I work on next?" paralysis. Just follow the positions.

Why This Works When Everything Else Fails

Visual clarity: You see exactly what matters most in each life area Flexible: Drag tasks up or down when priorities shift Contextual: Work tasks compete with work tasks, not family emergencies Simple: Work top to bottom, left to right

Most productivity systems assume you have uninterrupted focus time and predictable schedules. Suanpan works because it acknowledges that our lives have three main spheres, and priority within each sphere is what actually matters.

The Eisenhower Connection

The method combines todo simplicity with Eisenhower prioritization, presented as an abacus. Eisenhower tells you what type of work to focus on. Suanpan tells you which specific task to tackle next within that type.

Instead of four abstract quadrants, you get three concrete life areas with visual positioning that makes sense.

The "This Actually Works" Test

Three weeks after implementing this system, a major client called with an emergency project. Normally, this would have sent me into panic mode, reshuffling my entire week.

Instead, I opened Suanpan, positioned the new project at the top of my Work column, and immediately knew what had to shift down. The visual made it obvious. No stress, no overthinking—just clear trade-offs.

That's when I knew this wasn't just another productivity hack.

Getting Started Right Now

You don't need an app (though I built one). You need three columns and your current task list.

Paper & Pen: Draw three columns labeled Work, Family, Self. List tasks in order of relative importance within each column.

Digital: Use any tool that lets you create categories and reorder items. The key is position within category, not the tool.

Physical Abacus: Each rod represents a life area. Top beads = urgent, bottom beads = someday.

The Three-Week Challenge

Week 1: Set up your three columns and position your tasks. Don't overthink—just get them positioned relative to each other.

Week 2: Follow the system. Work top to bottom, column by column. Notice when decision fatigue hits (it should be less).

Week 3: Start repositioning tasks as priorities change. Notice how this feels different from traditional priority systems.

After three weeks, you'll know if this works for you.

Why Simple Beats Sophisticated

We've made productivity unnecessarily complex. The abacus has organized human thinking for thousands of years not through algorithms, but through the simple principle of meaningful position.

Your tasks aren't just items on a list. They're beads on an abacus.

And where you position them determines everything.

Suanpan combines todo simplicity with Eisenhower prioritization, presented as an abacus. Three columns: Work, Family, Self. Position tasks top to bottom by importance. Work your way down each column. No priority labels, no decision fatigue—just visual clarity when everything feels urgent.

Implementation Guide

Quick Start

Create three columns: Work, Family, Self
Position existing tasks top to bottom by relative importance
Work systematically from top to bottom, left to right
Reposition as needed when priorities shift

Daily Practice (2 minutes each morning)

Review positions—do they still make sense?
Add new tasks in appropriate positions
Start with the topmost task in your priority column

Weekly Review (10 minutes)

Move completed tasks off the board
Reposition remaining tasks based on new information
Archive tasks that never move up from bottom positions

Common Mistakes

"Everything feels urgent!" - Force yourself to choose relative positions anyway. Urgency is often an illusion.

"I keep moving tasks constantly" - Good! That means you're responding to real priority changes.

"I have too many tasks" - Start with fewer tasks, not more columns. If you can't fit priorities in three columns, you have too many priorities.

Tools That Work

Minimalist: Paper and pen, three columns
Digital: Any app with categories and drag-and-drop reordering
Physical: Actual abacus with beads representing tasks
Hybrid: Digital capture, paper daily planning

The tool doesn't matter. The positioning does.

Ready to try Suanpan? It's so intuitive, your kid could organize your life.