Ever found that a ‘to do’ list doesn’t work for you? The answer is to make two lists.
If you believe Time Management 101, the key to organising your tasks is to make a ‘to do’ list, perhaps prioritise as A, B and C tasks, and then just get some tasks done in order to have a sense of achievement.
But it doesn’t always work, sometimes because we’re too busy to make a list at all, but often because we end up doing a whole bunch of stuff that should be on the second list — the ‘not to do’ list.
The ‘not to do’ list is where the real discipline comes in. It requires thinking about the things that occupy your day, but don’t make any progress. The walk to the kitchen area for a cuppa that extends into the much-loved (by marketers) water cooler conversation. The quick check of the blog/news website/Twitter feed. Unlike the tasks on our to do list, these things don’t have a natural end, and it’s easy to let them grow from 5 minutes to 20 minutes. Three of those in a day burns up an hour.
These are the things to put on your ‘not to do’ list. Today I am not going to check Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn. Today I am not going to pause for that chat on the way to my coffee. Today I am not going to be part of small talk at the end of a meeting.
The ‘not to do’ list takes more discipline because it contains all the things that soak up time in your day, and they soak up time because we like doing them. Unlike the ‘to do’ list, which is really a list of chores. The self-control to focus on not doing stuff will pay off in more work getting done, and leaving work earlier to get on with life.