If you’re like many people, your work and personal life may have gained a lot of weight lately. And by that I mean you have too much to do that’s not getting done–because you have too much to do.
Too many tasks on your daily task list. Too many projects you’re working on or plan to work on soon. Too many commitments, responsibilities, and priorities.
You work hard but often end the day feeling like you got nothing done.
If this sounds familiar, you might want to put your life on a diet.
Once a year, or more often if you think it would help, schedule a quiet day to review your life and see what you can eliminate from that big plate of yours.
What are you doing that doesn’t need to be done? What can you do less of, or do less often? What can you delegate, automate, or do faster?
Look at the people in your life, the tools you use, and the processes you follow. There’s “fat” in there and you’ll do yourself a big favor by cutting it out.
Start by taking inventory. Make a list of everything you do in a typical day and week and note the amount of time you take to do it.
When your list is done, look at everything and make some decisions.
Nothing on your list should be sacred. Make every task and tool earn the right to continue in your life.
If you’re not sure, if you find yourself arguing to keep things the way they are, you might enlist the eyes and ears of someone who can be objective. Someone who might see things you can’t see, or don’t want to.
Make several passes through your list. On the first pass, add a label to indicate things that you can safely eliminate. Tools you don’t use, projects you are unlikely to do in this lifetime, people you really don’t want to speak to again.
On subsequent passes, identify projects you could move from “active” to “someday” or schedule to review them at a later date.
Think big. Cut your current projects or goals down to one or two in each area of your life and put the others out of sight.
But don’t ignore the small things. Collectively, they can take up a lot of time and energy.
Go for “lean” and “simple”. A small list of easy tasks and important projects, things you’re excited about and look forward to doing.
Favor projects with big potential. One big project that could transform your life instead of ten projects that probably won’t.
To get there, ruthlessly cut things you’re not certain you want to keep. For now, you’re just thinking and writing. You haven’t actually cut anything in the real world and you can always add something back if you change your mind.
There’s no right or wrong way to do this. Listen to your heart as much as your head. Favor things that make you happy as much as your most sacred obligations.
When you’re done, you should feel good about what remains. And feel good about all the time you reclaimed that you can now use to do important things and achieve your biggest goals.
If you “diet” day is successful, there’s just one more thing to do. Schedule your next diet day because if you’re like most of us, you’re going to gain back some of that weight.
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