Un-tasks
Posted by Troy Forrest on August 6th, 2009 at 11:20am
“You only get one birthday a year.
But you get 364 un-birthdays!
A very merry un-birthday, to you…”
The March Hare
Some of the things I chose not to do yesterday;
- Phone the client that’s given me the most money over the past 3 years
- Book a coffee with a top IT sales rep who might be interested in a sales coaching program with me
- Send a thank-you note to the wonderful client that referred me to another
- Run through my financials to work out how much I now need to sell each month to hit my year’s number
- Write 2 pages more of the mighty white paper I’m creating (ironically, on time management)
- Send my wife flowers
- Go for a run in the dark
- Build one more service that would help my current clients
- Ask for 10 referrals
These were my ‘un-tasks’ – things I could have focused on instead of doing the things I actually did. I didn’t consciously not do them – but by doing the other tasks on my to-do list, I still made the choice.
What are you not doing by following your to-do list today? Delivering an extra value-added dose of help to those who’ve paid you for some attention? Making a call to find one more person who’d benefit from your assistance? Investing 15 minutes building the cleverest client recruitment initiative anyone’s come up with in your industry for 10 years?
Are the tasks on your list more important than your un-tasks?
Inner monologue – “Aauugghhh! I don’t have enough time to do what’s already on the to-do list, let alone worry about what’s not on it!”. To-do list myopia isn’t always bad, but given the un-tasks floating in the background, you better make sure what’s on the list is unequivocally, categorically the very best use of your time.
And given what you’re sacrificing, you might want to try doing those tasks frighteningly well….
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