List 10 things you’re going to eliminate from your To-Do list now. When you really take a look at your To-Do list, you’ll discover some things on it are so low in priority that they’ll never get done. I love to delete as many as I can as fast as possible. Don’t you take a perverse sort of pleasure in deleting incoming email messages? I do. That means you’ll tackle the easy stuff first, so you feel like you’re making progress.
Why? Because you have an overwhelming urge to make a dent in that massive list – to reduce it in size. Worse yet, the things on your To-Do list that you really need to work on are the most likely to not get done. That means it’s bogged down again, which slows your overall productivity. Your brain is working behind the scenes on every little task – even though you aren’t aware of it. Everything that’s on your list is fighting for your mental attention. This may sound like heresy, but there’s sound research behind it. Cross off half the things on your To-Do list.
Once you’ve picked your main priorities, sequence them and then get to work. Even checking emails before you do this will negatively impact your ability to prioritize. Neuroscience research shows that prioritizing is one of the brain’s most taxing activities because it has to compare numerous items to each other and then decide. Pick your top three priorities right away.ĭo this before you even check your email. Here are 3 strategies to keep yourself from having an unproductive day – or even life! 1. You get anxious that you won’t get it all done. Research shows that the longer your list, the less likely you are to get things done. Then, throw in the birthday card you need to pick up, the groceries you need to get, and the tax forms that have to be sent in. Now, add all the new things you have to learn on top of it: new products, new markets, new pricing plans, new technology. You have prospecting calls to make, proposals to write, emails to send, service issues to solve. In Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, authors Burmeister and Tierney state that a person typically has 150 different tasks on their To-Do list. Every day you fall further and further behind. In fact, you’ve probably already added a few additional items. Your To-Do list is probably a mile long already.Īnd, if you’re like most people, you haven’t even made a dent in it. One most challenging aspects of learning something new is feeling overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what you don’t know.
0 kommentar(er)
