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In Good to Great, Jim Collins wrote, ‘Most of us lead busy, but undisciplined lives. We have ever-expanding ‘to do’ lists, trying to build momentum by doing, doing, doing—and doing more. And it rarely works. Those who build the good-to-great companies, however, made as much use of ‘stop doing’ lists as the ‘to do’ lists. They displayed a remarkable amount of discipline to unplug all sorts of extraneous junk.’
I read somewhere else that it’s also called ‘planned neglect.’ One violinist in a famous orchestra said that while she was still learning, she would practice for hours a day and only then would she make her bed and clean her room.
The famous Pareto principle states that the top 20% of people earn 80% of the riches and rewards. In the same way, 20% of what you’re doing results in 80% of your forward progress.
The Slight Edge, written by Jeff Olson, has a very good idea. The premise of the book is that everything you do in a day pushes you closer to or further from success, and explains about compound interest. But the idea I found helpful was the exercise of not just goal-setting, but breaking down that goal into little daily actions to reach the goal by a certain deadline. When things are bite-sized they’re easier to manage.
Using that in conjunction with David Allan’s ‘2 minute rule’ from his book, Getting Things Done, I find it easy to move towards successfully completing my goals. (The ‘2 minute rule’ states that if it can be done in two minutes or less, do it right away.)
All these books say very similar things and I guess it’s all about what works for one person doesn’t always work for another. I hear just as much from detractors of these various methods, so one of my sit-reps might be about the system that I use for now. And when situations change, my method will change as well.