The past few weeks, I’ve been on a rampage towards eliminating things from my life, from negativity to tasks I shouldn’t be doing, and more.
Specifically, I have taken Dan Sullivan’s advice to have no more than three important things on my task list to get done in a single day. If I’m done by 11am, that’s fine, the rest of the day is off. If it takes me longer (as it usually does), that’s fine, too!
There are a number of reasons to do this.
But the one I am finding to be amazing, in retrospect, is how much I was BSing myself into thinking I was getting meaningful stuff done.
I’d start the day with 15 things to do, accomplish about 8 of them, and be MAD that I “only” got 8 things done. This resulted in life becoming an absolute whirlwind. I never had a sense of accomplishing my goals, only for spinning my wheels.
Here’s what’s amazing:
When you only have to do THREE things, you become increasingly aware of what those three things are.
You know, pretty quickly, whether or not they are things that will move the needle for your company.
So instead of spinning my wheels in endless busyness, the past couple weeks or so, I’ve gotten considerably more of the right stuff done—and feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment to boot—even though I’ve actually “done” less.
And I have to tell you, this is more than positive thinking gobbledygook.
Things have been objectively better, and the company is literally making actual progress and growing as a result. Have less to do, do increasingly more of the right stuff, and make sure to always measure against your progress instead of measuring against some ideal that lives out there in the future.
These small changes will transform your life, and you’ll be amazed at how much your thinking plays into the objective reality of your daily experience.