18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done by Bregman Peter

Author:Bregman, Peter [Bregman, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: BUS088000
ISBN: 9781455500468
Publisher: Business Plus
Published: 2011-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

25

The Three-Day Rule

Getting Things Off Your To-Do List

So you’ve categorized your to-do list. Avoided things that don’t fit in with your plan for the year. And made sure that everything on the list reflects where you’ve strategically chosen to spend your time. Excellent.

Then you’ve taken your calendar for the day and made hard choices about what you can fit in your limited time. You’ve decided to do the more challenging things in the morning, when your thinking and patience are at their strongest; and the requests, interruptions, and needs of others can most likely be postponed for later in the day. Perfect.

But that still leaves you with the possibility—or rather probability—of a long list of items that didn’t fit into your calendar for the day. And that list will simply grow longer and more stressful—a continued reminder of what you aren’t accomplishing—day by day. What do you do with those things?

That’s where the three-day rule comes in. This rule ensures that no item on your list ever stays on it, haunting you, for more than three days.

Here’s what I do: After I’ve filled my calendar for the day, I review what’s left on the list. If there are new items I added that day or the previous two days, I leave them on to see if they make it onto my calendar tomorrow.

But for everything else—anything that’s been on my calendar for three days—I do one of four things:

1. Do it immediately. I’m often amazed at how many things have been sitting on my list for days that, when I decide to do them, take a few short minutes. Often it turns out to be a thirty-second voice mail or a simple two-minute email. Those things I do immediately.

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