Throw away your to do list and create a NOT to do list

Throw away your to do list and create a NOT to do list.

Like me you have probably been exposed to the latest ideas in time management, personal branding and goal setting. I try to integrate these ideas into my everyday workplace behavior as I seek to excel in my chosen field of sales.

Yet nothing has excited me so greatly as a very simple and yet profound question I was asked by an associate at First American Title: "You have a to-do list. But do you have a stop doing list?" I was astonished by the simplicity and power of this question. It cut to the heart of the matter. Why had this question never occurred to me?

Perhaps you too are struck by the appropriateness of this penetrating inquiry. As we begin a new year, what are we doing that no longer serves us well? Would we benefit from "zero-based thinking" whereby we force ourselves to justify every decision we have made, by subjecting it to rigorous analysis. Let us ask: "Knowing what I now know, would I make this decision over again, in the same way?" No doubt there are some things we would definitely stop doing if we would ask this question in such areas as relationships, investments and everyday activities.

In case you could use a little help getting started, here are a few behaviors I have on my list. Do you identify with some of these? Can you personalize the list and thereby benefit accordingly?

Stop living in the past. Have you heard of the notorious characters Burke and Hare who were arrested in 1827 for the horrible business venture in which they were involved? They had discovered that there was a very handsome profit to be made in digging up recently interred bodies and selling them to medical schools. A terrible thing of course, but ask yourself, are you perhaps a grave robber yourself? You see, every time you dig up an old grievance or an old mistake by rehearsing it over and over in your mind, or worse still, by talking to somebody else about it, you simply are ripping open a grave, and you know right well what to expect to find, don't you? Live in the present and leave the past alone. Just leave it. This is what the Great Teacher meant when He said, "Let the dead bury the dead."
Stop Dwelling On Weaknesses. The habit of focusing on and magnifying our limitations is something that should definitely be put on our not-to-do list. People throughout history have modeled the ability to ignore limitations and thereby achieve significant accomplishments. Handel wrote his best music after his doctors told him he was going to die; Beethoven wrote indescribably beautiful music after he was totally deaf. Three of the greatest epic poets of all time, Homer, Milton and Dante, were blind. Perhaps your perceived weakness is not that dramatic. Your weakness is simply that you are too busy to focus on the truly important things in your life. Stop dwelling on how busy you are. Have you ever looked at the thickness of the book, "Gone With The Wind?" Margaret Mitchell wrote that novel while she was working full time at a newspaper. Stop dwelling on weaknesses and take action in the direction of the fulfillment of your dreams.
Stop Spending Time With Toxic People. This item should definitely be on our stop doing list. Dr. David McClelland, in his years of research at Harvard, concluded that your choice of a "reference group" would, more than any other factor, determine what happened to you in life. Your reference group is made up of the people you identify with, associate with, and consider yourself similar to. Let us resolve to be highly selective about the people we associate with. Let us refuse to spend time with negative people. Remember that toxic people drain us of our energy and enthusiasm and make us feel tired and pessimistic. By choosing to stop spending time with negative people we will attract to ourselves positive people who will make us feel cheerful and optimistic.
Stop Wasting Time On Low-Return Activities. Making this resolution will result in a huge payback. The Pareto Principle or 80/20 Rule enables us to understand that eighty percent of our time is being consumed by activities that only yield twenty percent of our business. Marty Rodriguez, the number one agent in the world for Century 21, says that after seeing her colleagues burn out from trying to do everything at once, she took a different tack. "I learned to delegate," she says. "I don't cook, I don't do housework, I don't open the mail, I don't manage my own money. I focus on real estate." Making the deliberate choice to stop involving ourselves in low-return or even no-return activities is a great step forward.
Creating a not-to-do list can be a highly profitable exercise. Why not stop reading right now and begin making your personal stop doing list? I'm confident you'll find it to be a stimulating and beneficial look at the business, professional and personal aspects of your life. I certainly found the exercise to be extremely worthwhile!

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