Busy people are always writing lists of the things we have to do. Then we try to work out which ones are the most important, so that we can do them first. The busier you get, the longer the list gets, and the harder it becomes to prioritise.
It starts to get stressful because you can’t decide what’s most important, so you start a few at once. Before you know it the day is over, nothing’s been finished and the list is longer than when you started.
I’m going to borrow another Jim Collins idea and write a list of all the things I’ve decided not to do. I’m going to start with the most important things I shouldn’t do — the ones that take up the most time, but have the least benefit. It should help even up the ledger. The longer that list gets, the happier I’ll be, because I’ll be able to focus on my strengths, and build on them by eliminating distractions. And hopefully my to do list will get shorter because there will be a whole lot of things that I used to try to prioritise, that have now been marked simply as “don’t do”.
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