Saturday, August 3, 2013

Excerpts from The Art of Non-Conformity: The TO-STOP-DOING List

This really has been my favorite read this year.  I am on my third time re-reading it.  It has been monumentally influential for me.  Chris is my hero.


P. 177  The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau

“The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.” ~ Albert Schweitzer

The TO-STOP-DOING List

An important principle of life planning is that you can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything at the same time.   To be able to devote most of your time to projects and activities you enjoy, you’ll need to be forceful about dropping a lot of other activities.

The best way to stop spending time on unnecessary distractions is to make a “to-stop-doing list”  This is better than a to-do list, because it helps you see what is bringing you down….
Think about the tasks that drain your energy without contributing to anything worthwhile… the to-stop-doing list is for tasks that bring you down without giving you joy or helping anyone else.   Try to come up with at least three to five things you currently do that drain your time and keep your focus away from more important tasks, the principle is that many of these activities can be left undone or removed from our weekly activities without much repercussion.

1 comment:

  1. Stop spending so much time sitting at the computer. Less Facebook...no, really. Less time planning and more time doing. Less TV. Less time avoiding and procrastinating. Less time making excuses. I could get more personal on each of these but let's leave some mystery...

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