Your todo list is endless. From the moment you begin your day, you know that you will not be able to get to all of your work.
You fight your way through your list, only to discover that you dropped an important task (or two) along the way.
Instead of letting this happen, a better tactic is to choose which tasks you will drop while you are juggling priorities.
How Many Tasks Are You Juggling?
You can’t do it all. No one can.
You are probably juggling more todos that you can ever hope to carry.
If you have ever accidentally “dropped” an important task, you know the frustration in being busy but not productive.
Rather than accidentally dropping todos, you need to make a conscious choice about which balls (tasks) you will drop today.
‘You can’t do it all. Be deliberate in the tasks you drop.’
Just as important as what you are going to do today is what you choose not to do.
Here are just a few tips to ensure you Choose What to Drop Today:
- Make It a Choice Instead of an Accident – Don’t wait for life’s daily events to decide which tasks you won’t get to. Instead, make an active choice about your work and choose which tasks you don’t plan on doing today.
- Order Your Tasks by Priority – You must prioritize your todo list. Otherwise you will do the tasks in whichever order is convenient, rather than by importance. Make sure that more important tasks get done before you start lesser ones.
- Choose Meetings to Decline – Meetings and appointments are often responsible for taking over the time that you need to get your work done. Be picky and only attend meetings that have value. (Decline the time-wasters.)
- Cross Tasks Off Your List – Be ruthless with your todo list. Just because you captured a task, doesn’t mean that it has to be completed. Cross off tasks that are of low priority or don’t need to be performed.
- Say No When Appropriate – Saying No is an important skill to hone. Saying No when appropriate, will ensure that you protect your time to get tasks done.
Choose What Not to Do Today
Be conscious about what you should and shouldn’t be doing today.
By focusing on your priorities, you can feel comfortable about “dropping” lesser tasks.
It’s not about getting the most tasks done, but rather, the most important ones.
Question: What do you need to drop from your list today? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
You’re absolutely right. You can’t do it all so you need to proactively decide which tasks you will NOT do.
I often drop housework, and that is a bad plan, because it piles up and gets more difficult! I need to be smarter about that.
What a wonderful piece, Craig.
We’re often so swept up I the need to be “busy and not productive” while juggling more tasks then humanly possible. The solution can be delegation of those less important tasks. Yet there is no feasible way to outsource the more personal tasks that build your momentum. These are the tasks I label as ‘personal growth’ such as reading, writing about the content I read, reflecting upon a powerful passage or quote from that content.
These tasks require my personal attention. These are the tasks that have to be kept up as ruthlessly as possible.
Catching a pattern? These aren’t businesses tasks or money makers, at least not in the short-term way of thinking, but are those tasks that help form the rudimentary foundations of a personal growth strategy. I constantly struggle to ruthlessly cut the fat from the multitude of tasks under the label of personal growth from daily routines. I think this is because it is hard to prioritize one task over enough when it’s something you consider as helping you to grow as a person, and of course it’s human nature to think everything is the most important task ever, something you cover throughout this piece.
Digging down deep and having a reflective conversation with yourself about where your most beneficial personal growth is coming from and then choosing to keep those activities as your highest priorities is key. For me that’s reading, writing and everything else I’ve mentioned in this comments. I’ve cut lots of tasks and activities that don’t jive with my goals or suck too much time for little reward and personal growth/progression.
Just my two cents. But I hope someone reflects on what I’ve said and considers focusing not on adding in things they aren’t doing, but removing what is not working or bogging down their efforts.