Member-only story
Priorities and To-Do Lists: What Will You Gain or Lose?
Deciding what’s important and what you can let go of
Do you ever get stuck when trying to decide what your priorities should be?
I recently wrote about how Oliver Burkeman’s time management advice is the best I’ve ever heard. A week later, I reflected on how it was a total revelation for me.
In a nutshell, the advice is:
- You’re only one person with limited time alive.
- You can’t do everything, and neither should you try.
- Focus on the big important things rather than ticking lots of less important tasks off your To-Do list.
But it was Tai Le Grice’s comment on my second article that nailed how to put this into practice:
What will I gain if I do this thing? or, conversely, ‘What will I lose if I chose not to do this thing?’
We all have limited time available and a multitude of possible ways we can fill that time. Is there anything from your huge To-Do list you can drop because you won’t really lose anything by letting it go? And that big thing you keep putting off? What if that’s the one thing that will benefit you the most?
