The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

More and more becomes a heav­ier burden

As the months and years go by, the num­ber of tasks on your list grows since you prob­a­bly (if you are any­thing like most peo­ple) will start doing more new tasks than you stop doing old ones. After a while, you begin to real­ize that you sim­ply have too much to do. There is just not enough time for all of your most impor­tant tasks and your work­day becomes more about sur­viv­ing the dai­ly chaos of get­ting as much done as pos­si­ble, than work­ing with struc­ture and hav­ing a rea­son­able, accu­rate­ly pri­or­i­tized workload.

Give your­self a break!

If you then take a long, hard, scru­ti­niz­ing look at your­self and what you actu­al­ly spend time on dur­ing your work­day, chances are you will find some­thing that has ​”always” been impor­tant but which now no longer qual­i­fies as such. If it no longer serves its orig­i­nal pur­pose or pro­vides you with the val­ue it ini­tial­ly did, then sim­ply stop doing it.

Do this

If you have too much to do at the moment and sus­pect you have a few ​”tread­ing water”-tasks which take time and ener­gy but do not real­ly get you any­where, then do the following:

1. Look through the recur­ring tasks you have on your to-do-list. Can you spot any that you instant­ly know you could drop or skip?
2. Have a look at your list and try to iden­ti­fy tasks that always make you feel as if doing them was a waste of time or in some way mean­ing­less every time you do them.
3. Dur­ing the week ahead of you, observe what you spend time on and be on the look­out for tasks that:
   • used to be impor­tant back when you were respon­si­ble for attain­ing a spe­cif­ic goal, but which are not real­ly impor­tant anymore
   • result in a mate­r­i­al, report, or the likes which no one has asked you to com­pile or pro­duce for a very long time
   • you might not have to do at all if you updat­ed the tool, app, or soft­ware you are using to a more mod­ern one
   • you do out of habit but which no longer gives any­thing back (this could, for instance, be a recur­ring meet­ing you usu­al­ly have but which is not actu­al­ly need­ed anymore)
4. If you have the author­i­ty to deter­mine what tasks you will no longer do, then pro­claim to your­self that the last time you did the task in ques­tion real­ly was the final time you will ever do it.
5. If you are not alone in deter­min­ing what you do and do not do, find out what the con­se­quences of you ceas­ing to do some­thing would be and check in with the per­son who would be affect­ed or your boss to see if you can let go of the task or pass it on to some­one else.

More time for what mat­ters most

If you sift out the tasks that no longer con­tribute any actu­al val­ue once in a while, you will end up with a more rea­son­able work­load. You will have more time for the tasks that actu­al­ly mat­ter and are impor­tant right now. It will become eas­i­er to accom­plish what you are striv­ing for — and with less effort.

What’s your way?

How do you ensure that the tasks you choose to spend time on are the right ones? If you have con­sid­ered the mat­ter and thought of a clever solu­tion, I would love to hear about it. Please feel free to email me!

(Do you know what you can do to make it eas­i­er to del­e­gate?)