Effectiveness Habit #1: Get it Out of Your Head

You can get more done with more ease by building seven effectiveness habits. Build them one at a time over the next several weeks and months. You need not, for the most part, build them in the order I present them.

Here’s today’s habit…

Effectiveness Habit #1: Get it Out of Your Head

There really is no way to track in our heads all our current and potential tasks. When we try to keep everything we

  • have to do,
  • are committed to doing,
  • might do, or
  • would want to do

in our heads, we find we’ve stored these tasks in a way that they are impossible to work with effectively.

You have hundreds if not thousands of current and potential tasks to track. Tasks like, “Gotta clean that dust bunny in the hallway,” “Negotiate the Prytonics deal,” and “Love to take a trip to Ireland,” are rattling around your mind.

When we try to keep it all in our heads, we can forget important tasks and miss deadlines and opportunities. Worse, we become distracted. When we start working on one task, we feel uneasy or guilty and wonder if we shouldn’t be doing something else.

Solution: Write it all down

Build the habit of writing down every current and potential task. Write them as soon as you think of them. And this is very important: You will need to scan, evaluate, and review all your tasks, so write them down in one place such as a notebook or electronic list. Having too many lists or sticky notes or emails stacking up will not help.

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