If you have even the most rudimentary time management system, you probably have a to-do list. But you probably don’t have a not-to-do list, and that can be nearly as important in keeping you on track and ensuring that you’re spending your time in the places where it will pay off the most.
Often when you’re struggling to manage your time well, you may find that potential projects, tasks and meetings keep popping up that aren’t high priorities for you, but which you say yes to anyway because you feel obligated, or you want to be nice, or it sounds like it could be a good idea. But if you let yourself say yes to everything, by definition you’ll be distracting yourself from the smaller number of items that you’ve decided are the most important.
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Since there isn’t enough time in the day to do everything that might pop up on your radar, a better path is to make strategic decisions about where you are and — crucially — are not going to spend time. If you don’t make those decisions strategically, the items that don’t end up getting done are more likely to be accidents rather than things you chose deliberately. Or you’ll simply be stretched too thin, giving short shrift to the things you want to prioritize.
Enter the not-to-do list. The not-to-do list is exactly what it sounds like: a list of things that you’ve decided you will not spend time on. The idea is that by deliberately thinking it through and making specific commitments in this area, you’ll be more likely to say no to those wrong expenditures of time in the future.
To get started, think back on how you’ve spent your time in the last month. What things did you do that weren’t a good use of your time? What items came up that have questionable value when it comes to achieving your goals? Write down the items you think are worthy candidates for your not-to-do list.
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Keep in mind that this doesn’t need to be an exhaustive list that details every idea you’ve ever had and discarded. If there’s no danger of being drawn into spending time on it now, it doesn’t need to go on the list. Instead, your not-to-do list should contain the things that you might be tempted to spend time on or that you’re sometimes asked to spend time on and which you’ve decided not to pursue.
These might be very specific tasks like “don’t respond to unsolicited sales calls” or “don’t review junior staff’s client communications unless they’re high-importance.” Or they might be about more general habits, like “don’t agree to meetings that don’t have a clear agenda” or “don’t check work email over the weekend.”
If you’re a manager, you might also come up with a not-to-do list for your team. For example, if you periodically get asked to have a booth at conferences and don’t think it’s a good use of your team’s time, that should go on the list. Or if you have deliberately deprioritized social media because you want your team’s focus to be on other priorities, put it on the list so that everyone is on the same page (and so you all remember the decision the next time a staff member suggests live-Tweeting your strategy retreat).
The idea is that by thinking these items through, writing them down and explicitly labeling them as “not to do,” you’re more likely to pause and reconsider before saying an automatic yes next time and to stay focused on what’s most important.
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Of course, unless you’re senior enough to make these calls yourself, you may want to loop in your boss so that you can ensure she agrees with you that it doesn’t make sense to spend your time on X or Y. If she disagrees, you’ll certainly want to know that before saying no to those projects, and that might prompt you to revisit your overall planning and figure out if there’s something else you can jettison instead. And when you do get your manager’s backing, it’s likely to be even easier to stick to your not-to-do list in the future because you’ll be able to say no with the confidence of knowing your manager agrees with that decision.
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Why You Need a ‘Not-To-Do’ List originally appeared on usnews.com
