I keep seeing suggestions for living a fuller, richer life without quite so much in it. But also, there’s tremendous pressure for many people to constantly do more. I was talking with some leaders recently who said that they are bombarded by ever-changing priorities. Make this a priority, but then make that the priority. They basically described being in the center of a never-ending fire drill.
Here are some suggestions I keep running across for having more by doing less:
- Focus. Choose the one right thing, and work on it every day.
- Give yourself an unfair advantage by identifying your vital few things to do. Let the rest of it go.
- Don’t dilute your efforts by trying to do everything at once. You’ll find you get discouraged because it seems like nothing ever gets done that way.
- Don’t work 60-hour weeks (at least not as a norm)… You’ll just take longer and longer to get 40-hours worth of work done.
- Get enough sleep. Sleep-deprived people may think they are doing just fine, but they don’t function as well as they think they do.
The hardest part of taking this advice might be that we have so many great opportunities today to do an ever-increasing number of great-sounding things.
However, I’ve learned from experience (and much to my initial surprise) that there’s a limit to how far time will stretch.
So what if, instead of filling up all our time with more and more things to do… what happens if we carefully choose just a few things? Maybe one big thing at a time and a few smaller things. Easier said than done, but maybe it’s worth the effort.
What do you think?
Resources
Book | The ONE Thing
Book Review | The ONE Thing
Book | Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Book Review | Why You Should Flush 90% of Your To-Do List Down the Toilet
Post | Tip of the Week: Essentialism, by Greg McKeown
Article | 10 Reasons to Stop Working So Hard
