Discardia_ More Life, Less Stuff - Dinah Sanders [23]
As a general principle, spend 80% of your time on the 20% most important activities. The corollary to this is that 80% of what will fall onto your plate is not a priority. That doesn't necessarily mean that you can discard it all, but some of it can be scratched off your list and the rest can be postponed until the important stuff is done. What matters most is to be doing something in that top 20% more of the time than not.
Acknowledge the allure of completion and resist doing so much quick busywork that you fail to move your most important projects forward. The hope for an easy win can keep us coming back to our email inboxes to see what has arrived in the past few minutes. Before we spend any chunk of time questing for inbox zero, we need to look for and do the next actions from our goals.
Picking three “Most Important Things”
Discardia is a framework. One of the things I've frequently bolted onto mine is blogger and author Leo Babauta's idea of picking three “Most Important Things” for each day. Ideally, these should be derived from the top goals for your top priorities.
Pick your three things before looking at email. Then scan quickly for anything that might need to be traded for one of the three you picked, and get to work right away on what matters. This is also a great Friday afternoon exercise. Leave yourself a note on your desk with the three things you want to accomplish Monday and then start switching into your off-duty thinking by identifying three things that you’d like to have happen over the weekend.
Getting stuff out of your head and safely parked somewhere in your system—whether paper or digital—combined with picking today's few priorities is vastly more productive than perfect fiddly management of all possible tasks.
Shiny buckets
As I maintain my list of goals and priorities, one visual image to which I keep returning is a set of shiny silver buckets and big heavy rubber balls to put in them. The buckets represent my priorities, my core values, and the roles I play; all of which defines who I really am and want to be. The balls are the goals I have right now in relation to those priorities. I can’t hold very many buckets at once—certainly seven would be the maximum and that would require three hooked on each arm and one handle gripped in my teeth! The more balls I put in each bucket the fewer buckets I can hold.
The ridiculousness of the image of that physical burden helps remind me not to overload myself mentally. I can choose a manageable amount of stuff to be actively working on now, knowing that I will add new balls or swap out the buckets as I finish with these.
Having trouble identifying those buckets? Think about who you want to be, and about the roles you want to play for yourself and in the lives of those around you. Choose three things you want and three things you don't want in your life. Think big. Don't edit what your heart and gut are telling you; it's the truth of your wanting, which will fuel your change in the right direction. Something that sounds little and achievable, of which you basically like the idea, will not lead to as much positive growth as burning for something huge that you're afraid you can never have.
You can change your choices later, but choose something now. Pick a road and get moving.
Next time you have an option—and we are faced with options all day long—make sure that, whenever possible, you're going for things that fit the want list and avoiding things leading to the don’t-want list.
Juggling
The details of which top thing to do are insignificant compared to the impact of staying focused on the key stuff. As you meet goals and your situation shifts, the items in that top 20% will change. Things that are currently lower down may