The ABCDE method is a forced ranking: letter every task A through E, then refuse to start a lower letter while a higher one is still open. A has a serious cost if skipped; B is milder; C is optional; D is handed off; E is deleted. The rule that does the work is the refusal, not the alphabet.
Key takeaways
- The ABCDE method letters a work pile by consequence — A must, B should, C nice, D delegate, E eliminate — and forbids starting a lower letter while a higher one is still open (Tracy, 2001/2017).
- Herbert Simon’s 1955 model of rational choice treated search itself as costly: you stop when an option meets a bar, not when you have compared the whole set, which is why a fully ranked dump is the wrong procedure.
- Nelson Cowan’s review put the typical working-memory focus near four chunks, not an open board of twenty — a lettered stop is a way to keep only A-1 in that focus (Cowan, 2001).
- Switching away from an unfinished A leaves a residue of attention that measurably hurts the next task; finishing is not always enough, you also have to disengage (Leroy, 2009).
- A living board that you re-letter every hour never leaves the deliberative mindset Heckhausen and Gollwitzer described in 1987 — the letters only work after they become a yes.
What the ABCDE method actually is
The ABCDE method is Brian Tracy’s forced ranking: every item on today’s pile gets one letter, and you do not start a B while an A is still open. Tracy wrote the letters into Eat That Frog! as a way to stop treating a to-do list as a menu. The alphabet is a label. The method is the refusal. If A-1 is unfinished, B is occupancy, C is a hobby, and a new ping is not a letter.
That is a different job from still being unable to choose. When every option is still being compared and nothing has been allowed to become a task, the page you want is analysis paralysis — the Decisions parent this article sits under. ABCDE assumes the pile already exists. You are not hunting for a hidden fifth option. You are refusing to pretend twenty lines are twenty equals.
It is also not the same as choosing the vital few. How to prioritise tasks is the sister page for the cut: which one or two would still matter on Friday if the rest slipped. ABCDE is what you do after that cut, or when a leftover dump still needs a consequence order so the morning does not start on a C. Ranking is not choosing. Letters are a ranking tool. If you letter a list of twenty without a no, you have numbered a dump in a new font.
Daniel Levitin, in The Organized Mind, argues that attention is scarce and that the cheap move is to get the pile out of your head and onto an external system that does not keep asking you to re-decide. ABCDE is one such system. It does not organise your files. It organises the next hour: one letter is live, the rest wait, and the waiting is written down so working memory can drop them. That is the useful overlap with Levitin. It is not a licence to build a second brain of leftover C’s.
What each letter means
A through E is a consequence scale, not a personality test and not a mood. Tracy’s definitions are blunt on purpose. If you soften them, the refusal collapses and you are back to a numbered list.
- A — must do. Something serious happens if this is skipped: a missed deadline with a name on it, a broken promise, a cost you will still be paying on Friday. If two A’s exist, they become A-1 and A-2. You start at A-1.
- B — should do. A milder cost if skipped. Someone is mildly disappointed. A small mess waits. B is real work. It is not allowed to open while an A is open.
- C — nice to do. Nothing of consequence happens if it dies. Inbox-zero theatre, a nicer slide, a “quick” tidy. C is how a morning disappears while A-1 sits in the corner.
- D — delegate. Someone else can own it. Delegation is a letter, not a later pile you will “get to after lunch.” If it stays on your desk, it was not a D.
- E — eliminate. The item does not need to exist. If you can delete it and the week does not change, it was never a task. It was a ghost with a checkbox.
How ABCDE differs from a to-do list, Eisenhower, Ivy Lee, and eat the frog
A to-do list collects; ABCDE ranks by skip-cost and then forbids starting down the alphabet. A list of fourteen is fourteen open loops. Letters do not shrink the list by magic. They name which loops are allowed to be open. Nelson Cowan’s 2001 review of working-memory evidence put the typical focus of attention nearer four chunks than George Miller’s older “seven plus or minus two.” An open board of fourteen is not a plan. It is a load. A-1 is a load you can actually hold.
Eisenhower’s 1954 line — what is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important — is a filter, not this method. The four-box matrix that later writers drew from that speech will sort a pile into urgent/important cells. It will not tell you to refuse a B. You can fill every box and still start the loud C. ABCDE’s extra rule is sequential: higher letter first, no exceptions for warming up.
The Ivy Lee method is a nightly cap of six, ranked, one at a time. Eat the frog is a start rule: do the ugliest hard yes first. Both sit nearby. Neither is this URL. Ivy Lee caps the pile. Eat the frog picks the first bite. ABCDE letters the whole remaining dump and then applies the refusal across the day. You can use a frog as A-1. You cannot replace the alphabet with “do the nasty thing” and still be running ABCDE.
Why people skip the letters
People skip the letters because ranking by consequence is slower than ranking by volume, and volume pays you immediately. A ping writes itself to the top of the pile. A C can be finished in twelve minutes and ticked. An A often cannot. Piers Steel’s 2007 meta-analysis found that how aversive a task feels is one of the stronger correlates of delay. ABCDE is a machine for putting the aversive A first. That is exactly why it gets quietly replaced with “I’ll just clear a few small ones.”
Herbert Simon’s 1955 paper is the other half of the skip. Search is costly. A good-enough letter is cheaper than an optimal total order. The counterfeit version of that insight is worse: skip the letters entirely and start whatever is nearest. That is not satisficing. Satisficing still uses a bar. “Good enough for this morning is the draft in the shared folder” is a bar. “Whatever is already open” is a flinch.
There is a mindset problem on top of the volume problem. Heinz Heckhausen and Peter Gollwitzer distinguished a deliberative state of mind (still weighing) from an implemental one (already committed) in 1987. Lettering is supposed to end deliberation. A board you re-letter at 10:12, 11:40, and 14:05 never crosses that line. You stay predecisional and call it planning. The letters look busy. They have not become a yes.
The four traps that fake a ranking
The usual fakes are volume-as-A, a warm-up C, a D that never leaves, and an E that stays “just in case.”
- Volume writes A. The inbox, the chat badge, the meeting that “only you can take.” Eisenhower’s split is the cheap substitute: urgent looks like must. A is skip-cost, not decibels. If Friday does not change when you ignore it, it was not an A.
- The warm-up C. “I’ll do two easy ones to get going.” That is occupancy. Leroy’s 2009 residue finding is the cost: you leave A unfinished, start C, and a part of attention stays pointed at A. The warm-up did not warm anything. It split the morning.
- The D that stays. Delegation written on a sticky note is still your task. A D has a name, a handoff, and a date the other person accepted. Until then it is an A or a B you are pretending is gone.
- The immortal E. Items survive because deleting them feels like giving up. If nothing happens when the line dies, it was never work. It was a souvenir of a week you already finished.
Honest limit. Tracy’s letters are a practitioner rule from a popular book, not a randomised trial of “people who use ABCDE finish more.” The neighbouring findings — costly search, a small working-memory focus, residue after an unfinished switch, aversiveness as a delay correlate — support pieces of the everyday pattern. They do not prove that five letters outperform every other ranking on every job. Some work is a craft that should not be lettered into a sprint. Some stalls are not a missing alphabet.
Why it costs more than it feels like
Skipping the letters feels like staying flexible, and the bill arrives as a morning spent on C’s while A-1 still has no first sentence. You were busy. Ticks appeared. The week-shaping job did not move. That is the cheap counterfeit of productivity: motion that displays well and completion that does not.
Sophie Leroy showed the hidden half of that bill in 2009. Switching away from an unfinished task leaves attention residue that measurably impairs the next one, and completing the first task is not always enough — you also have to disengage. A day of B’s and C’s in front of an open A is a residue machine. You pay twice: once on the unfinished A, and again on every smaller job you used to avoid it.
Joshua Rubinstein, David Meyer and Jeffrey Evans timed the control cost of a task switch: executive control has to shift the goal, then reactivate a different set of rules, and the tax grows with complexity (Rubinstein, Meyer & Evans, 2001). Letter-hopping — A for eight minutes, C because a slack arrived, B because it looked smaller — is that tax on a loop. People experience it as “I had a fragmented morning.” The list looks innocent because it is tidy.
Edwin Locke and Gary Latham’s 2002 goal-setting summary is the other cost. Specific, difficult goals raise performance relative to vague “do your best” instructions across decades of trials. An unlettered pile is “do your best at everything.” A-1 is a specific, difficult goal for the next block. You do not need to believe Tracy to use that. You need to believe that “make progress on the list” is not a goal. It is a weather report.
Levitin’s attention argument makes the same bill feel less moral and more mechanical. You cannot hold the whole dump in the focus Cowan described. Something will drop. If you do not choose the drop, volume chooses it, and volume prefers C. The cost is not that you are weak. The cost is that an external system that does not re-ask the question was never installed, so working memory kept running a ranking it cannot finish.
ABCDE vs nearby methods
ABCDE is a consequence ranking with a no-start rule; the neighbours are a choose, a filter, a cap, or a first bite — mixing them up produces the wrong fix.
| Method | What it claims | What it is not | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|---|
| ABCDE (Tracy) | Letter by skip-cost; never start a lower letter while a higher one is open | Not a diagnosis; not a trial; not a to-do app | Use after the pile exists and needs a refusal |
| Choosing the vital few | Pick the one or two that change the week; let equals become a no | Not a full alphabet on an uncut dump | Do this first — how to prioritise tasks |
| Eisenhower split (1954) | Important is seldom urgent; urgent is seldom important | Not a sequential refusal | Filter volume. Then letter what remains |
| Ivy Lee | Six tasks tonight, ranked, one at a time | Not five letters; not unlimited D’s and E’s | Cap the day after the choose |
| Eat the frog | Do the hardest yes first | Not the rest of the alphabet | A-1 can be the frog. The frog is not ABCDE |
| Analysis paralysis | Stuck comparing past the point more analysis would change the call | Not a ranking problem | Leave this page; the job is still unchosen |
Read the table left to right before you import a method. If the job is unchosen, you are in analysis paralysis. If the pile is twenty equals, you are on the prioritise sister. If the pile is already cut and you keep opening C’s, you are here. If you only needed a nightly six, Ivy Lee is enough and this alphabet is decoration.
Common mistakes
- Twelve A’s. If everything is A, nothing is. Recut by Friday-cost until one or two lines would still hurt if they slipped. The rest are B or below.
- Lettering by mood. “I feel like an A person today” is not a consequence. A is what happens if you skip it, not how heroic it sounds.
- Doing C’s to warm up. The refusal is the method. A warm-up C is how A-1 stays closed and residue stays on (Leroy, 2009).
- Re-lettering every hour. That is leftover deliberation (Heckhausen & Gollwitzer, 1987). Letter once for the block. A living board never becomes a yes.
- Treating D as a later pile. If it is still on your desk, it is not delegated. Write the name or change the letter.
- Swapping this page for eat the frog or Ivy Lee. The frog is a first bite. Ivy Lee is a cap of six. This URL is the alphabet plus the refusal.
- Using letters as a diagnosis. ABCDE is a work ranking. It does not explain a freeze, a mood, or a health state. If the stall is that you can name A-1 and still will not start, that is a different page than a missing letter.
When letters are the wrong tool
Letters are the wrong tool when the job is still unchosen, when the work is the hours, or when the stall is not a ranking problem. A first-principles draft, a care conversation, a code review that is the job — those should not be lettered into a sprint so the alphabet looks obedient. Tracy’s rule is for a mixed dump of must / should / nice / hand / drop. It is not a licence to starve craft.
It is also the wrong tool when you do not yet have a pile. More options, more comparison, no yes — that is analysis paralysis, and more letters will only decorate the stall. Simon’s bar still applies, but the missing piece is a stop, not an A-1. And if the list is already three distinct items with a clear preference, you do not need an alphabet. You need to start. Importing five letters onto a job that is already a yes is ceremony.
This page will not diagnose a freeze, treat a mood, or list clinical symptoms. If the honest sentence is “I know A-1 and I cannot begin,” a cleaner letter will not create a start. Use the Decisions cluster for the choose and the stall. Use this URL when the pile is letterable and the leak is starting too far down the alphabet.
The evidence behind this
The letters are a practitioner rule; the neighbouring findings are empirical, and they do not all claim the same thing. The table separates Tracy’s book from the studies this page actually leans on, and it says what each one can and cannot carry.
| Source | Design and size | Finding | What we used it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tracy (2001/2017), Eat That Frog! | Popular practitioner book; not a trial | Letter tasks A–E by consequence; never start a lower letter while a higher one is open | The definition of the method. Not causal proof that lettered people finish more |
| Simon (1955), Quarterly Journal of Economics | Theoretical model of rational choice under limited search | Search is costly; stop when an option meets a bar (satisficing) | Why a fully ranked dump is the wrong procedure, and why a lettered stop is closer to a bar |
| Cowan (2001), Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Review of working-memory evidence | The typical focus of attention is nearer four chunks than seven | Why an open board of twenty cannot be the plan, and why A-1 is a holdable load |
| Leroy (2009), Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes | Lab experiments on switching away from unfinished work | Unfinished tasks leave attention residue that impairs the next task; disengagement matters | The cost of opening a C while A is still open |
| Heckhausen & Gollwitzer (1987), Motivation and Emotion | Experiments on deliberative vs implemental mindsets | Weighing and committed doing are different cognitive states | Why a board you re-letter hourly never becomes a yes |
| Steel (2007), Psychological Bulletin | Meta-analysis of procrastination correlates | Task aversiveness is among the stronger predictors of delay | Why people skip A for a warm-up C |
| Locke & Latham (2002), American Psychologist | Review of decades of goal-setting trials | Specific, difficult goals beat vague “do your best” | Why “make progress on the list” is not a goal and A-1 is |
| Rubinstein, Meyer & Evans (2001), Journal of Experimental Psychology: HPP | Lab timing of task-switch costs | A switch requires a goal shift then a rule reactivation; the tax grows with complexity | The cost of hopping A to C to B inside one morning |
| Iyengar & Lepper (2000), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | Field and lab choice experiments, including a jam display | A larger set can reduce purchase and later satisfaction in some settings | A neighbour, not a proof: more lines can stall a pick; not every extra line ruins a day |
| Levitin (2014), The Organized Mind | Popular synthesis of attention and organisation research | Attention is scarce; external systems beat keeping the pile in your head | Why letters belong on paper (or a thin list), not as a running mental sort |
Frequently asked questions
What is the ABCDE method?
The ABCDE method is a forced ranking popularised by Brian Tracy: you give every task a letter from A to E by the cost of skipping it, then refuse to start a lower letter while a higher one is still open. A is must-do, B is should-do, C is nice-to-do, D is delegate, and E is eliminate. The alphabet is a label. The method is the refusal. A numbered to-do list still keeps every line alive. Letters are supposed to make only A-1 legal for the next block of time.
Who invented the ABCDE method?
Brian Tracy popularised the ABCDE ranking in Eat That Frog!, first published in 2001 and later revised. The letters are his teaching device, not a laboratory protocol and not an ancient system with a hidden origin story. Later writers reused the same five letters in blogs and planners. Using the letters is not the same as originating them. This page treats Tracy as the named source of the rule, then leans on separate research — Simon, Cowan, Leroy, Steel — for why a refusal might work when a dump does not.
What do the letters A, B, C, D and E stand for?
A means must do: something serious happens if you skip it. B means should do: a milder cost. C means nice to do: nothing of consequence if it dies. D means delegate: someone else can own it, with a name and a handoff. E means eliminate: the line does not need to exist. If two A’s sit on the same day, they become A-1 and A-2, and you start at A-1. The letters are a consequence scale. They are not moods, personality types, or a diagnosis.
How is the ABCDE method different from the Eisenhower matrix?
Eisenhower’s 1954 line splits important from urgent. The later four-box matrix is a filter for volume. ABCDE is a sequential refusal: do not start a B while an A is open, no matter how urgent the B feels. You can fill every Eisenhower box and still begin the loud C. Use the split to stop pings writing the top of the list. Then letter what remains by skip-cost. The matrix does not replace the alphabet, and the alphabet does not replace a vital-few choose on an uncut dump of twenty.
How is the ABCDE method different from eat the frog?
Eat the frog is a start rule: do the hardest, ugliest yes first. ABCDE is a full ranking plus a no-start rule for every lower letter. A-1 can be the frog. The frog is not the rest of the alphabet. You can eat a frog and still spend the afternoon on C’s. That is not ABCDE. This page stays with the letters. The eat-the-frog URL stays with the first bite. Do not collapse them so one book chapter has to do two jobs on the site.
How is the ABCDE method different from the Ivy Lee method?
Ivy Lee is a nightly cap: write six tasks, rank them, do them one at a time, and refuse to start two. ABCDE letters an existing pile A through E, including delegate and eliminate, and forbids starting down the alphabet. Ivy Lee shrinks the list to six. ABCDE can still be run on a leftover dump if you actually use D and E. If you import ABCDE onto twenty lines and never drop an E, you have Ivy Lee’s ranking instinct without Ivy Lee’s cap. Use the cap when the need is a short tomorrow. Use the letters when the leak is starting too low.
What if everything on my list is an A?
Then you do not have an ABCDE problem yet. You have an uncut pile. Recut by Friday-cost: which one or two lines would still hurt if they slipped, and which equals are a no. How to prioritise tasks is that choose. After the pile is small, letter what remains. Twelve A’s is a way to avoid a no. Tracy’s A-1 / A-2 split only works when A is rare. If the honest sentence is that every line has a name and a deadline, you still have to pick the one that starts this block. The alphabet cannot do that for you.
Is the ABCDE method scientifically proven?
No. Eat That Frog! is a practitioner book, not a trial of lettered versus unlettered workers. What is empirical are the neighbouring findings: Simon’s 1955 costly-search model, Cowan’s 2001 working-memory review, Leroy’s 2009 residue experiments, Heckhausen and Gollwitzer’s 1987 mindset split, Steel’s 2007 aversiveness correlate, and Locke and Latham’s goal-setting summary. Those support pieces of the pattern — a stop beats an endless sort, a small focus cannot hold a dump, unfinished A’s leak, re-lettering never becomes a yes — without turning five letters into a measured constant. Treat ABCDE as a lens. Demand a design before you treat a letter as a finding.
Sources
- Tracy, B. (2001/2017). Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time. Berrett-Koehler.
- Levitin, D. J. (2014). The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. Dutton.
- Simon, H. A. (1955). A behavioral model of rational choice. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 69(1), 99–118. doi:10.2307/1884852
- Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), 87–114. doi:10.1017/S0140525X01003922
- Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168–181. doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2009.04.002
- Heckhausen, H., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (1987). Thought contents and cognitive functioning in motivational versus volitional states of mind. Motivation and Emotion, 11(2), 101–120. doi:10.1007/BF00992338
- Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65–94. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.65
- Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705
- Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6), 995–1006. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.995
- Rubinstein, J. S., Meyer, D. E., & Evans, J. E. (2001). Executive control of cognitive processes in task switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27(4), 763–797. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.27.4.763
Related reading on The Growth Reads
The books behind this
- The Organized Mind summary — Levitin’s attention-and-external-systems argument, which is the unused down-link for this row
Related articles
- Analysis paralysis — the Decisions parent: stuck before the job is chosen, not ranking after it is
- How to prioritise tasks — choosing the vital few; the sister this alphabet sits beside
- The Ivy Lee method — a six-item cap, not five letters
- Eat the frog method — the hardest-yes-first start rule, not the rest of the alphabet
- Decision paralysis — a stall at the choose, not a missing A-1
- Parkinson’s Law — slack filling a container after the job is already lettered
Go deeper
How this article was researched
The Growth Reads editorial team writes from primary sources: Tracy’s ABCDE chapter in Eat That Frog!, Levitin’s The Organized Mind, and the peer-reviewed papers named above. Every study cited was read in the original publication or its published abstract, and every figure is quoted with its design so you can judge its weight. Tracy’s own letters are labelled a practitioner rule in the body rather than dressed as a trial. Where a finding is a review, a meta-analysis, or limited to lab switching tasks, the text says so.
This article is a work-and-habits page about ranking a pile by consequence. It does not diagnose, treat, or list clinical symptoms, and nothing above is intended as medical or mental-health advice.
How we work: every article on The Growth Reads is built from the books in our library plus the research they rest on, and is reviewed and date-stamped when the evidence changes. Read our full methodology.