What if you spent one day FINISHING?
I’m a grand starter of projects – lots of ideas, lots of enthusiasm. If starting a project was all it took, I’d be Napoleon by now.
Alas, there is also the finishing to tend to.
So for this one day, I’m going to try a little experiment: rather than follow my usual routine, which includes reading tons of news articles, blog commentary, and so on, I’m going to set all of that aside for tomorrow, and take this time instead to finish things that are already on my plate. I’m tantalizingly close to finishing roughly, oh, six thousand items on my to-do list, and I want to see how many of them I can get off my plate today.
I’ll check e-mail at intervals through the day to make sure nothing has blown up and I’ll talk to anyone who comes by my desk to talk to me, but otherwise, I’m planning to hold myself incommunicado while I finish, finish, FINISH.
At the end of the day, I’ll post again to let you know how everything went. Meanwhile, please tell me:
What could you accomplish if you turned off the spigot of new tasks coming into your life, concentrated solely on tasks or projects already underway, and spent one solid day knocking things out?
~
Related posts:
~
(Photo by Leonid Mamchenkov.)
Category: ManagementIf you liked this post, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed so you can receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.
4 Comments so far
Leave A Comment
—————————————
| | |
| Urgent & Important | Important |
|————————————–|
| | |
| Urgent | NOT Urg./Impt. |
|————————————–|
Ruthless adherence to priorities = FINISHING ?
Working on UR box keeps UL empty, ignoring LR box frees up time to work on UR ==> Virtuous Cycle ?
That didn’t work very well cosmetically…sorry….imagine a box.
@twalk wrote: “If starting a project was all it took, I’d be Napoleon by now.”
I’m so with you, brother! I have stacks and scads and piles on stacks of unfinished stuff. “I’ll get to that when I have a little more time.” Famous last words.
Dave — Indeed, it should turn into a virtuous cycle. You focus relentlessly on what’s most important, you build up a lead there, and the trivia of life/career drop away as you continue to reinvest in Steven Covey’s “Quadrant II”.
Hmm . . .