The “Don’t” List

Harry Callahan, as portrayed by Clint Eastwood in “Magnum Force,” said, “A man’s gotta know his limitations.” And yes, we must extend that quotation to include women as well.

So many times, we become overwhelmed by the “Do” list – just because there is SO much to do. Prioritizing helps, but there’s always something else that seems to be of a more urgent priority. In order to maintain our sanity, we must be able to politely say, “no.” Perhaps by saying, “Not at this time,” “Let’s explore that a little further before pursuing it,” or “I may not be able to get to that this week.” Greg McKeown’s book, “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less,” has suggestions regarding how to do this, even pointing out that the word “priority” was never pluralized until recently. Prioritization assumes a ranking, and there can be only one item in the top place. Today, we seem to think that a dozen or so “priorities” are acceptable. And that’s where the difficulties begin.

I once found a set of magnets that had seven levels of prioritization – Urgent, Important, ASAP, Today, Soon, Can Wait, Trivial. The Urgent one was red – and all the others were a shade of green. I changed it up a little bit, and gave them colors – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Black. Color-coding didn’t matter either – guess where everything landed?

Many of the productivity “apps” available today only have three or four levels of prioritization. The thing is that if everything is Urgent or Important, those might get done, but the other two (or five) categories just seem to hang on, making the list continue to grow. So let’s take another approach.

First, you must realize that the ability to instantaneously reprioritize can be learned – but you have to know what needs to be done. The operative words in that phrase are NOT “to be done,” as we continue to make endless “do” lists and become further overwhelmed. The operative word is “needs.” Once that realization is made, let’s use those four categories contained in your app a little differently – and your DO list becomes 4 lists: NEEDS to be done, SHOULD be done, COULD be done, and DON’T do.

I refer to the last list as DON’T, since some would choose “DISCARD.” However, there’s this part of me that always says, “Save Everything.” “Do” items are not like clothing – if you don’t use them in a year, get rid of them. Personally, I discovered that a term paper that I wrote in HIGH SCHOOL has relevance today’s environment of organizational change (and high school was more than 30 years ago). In that same spirit, your DON’T DO list should be the largest list you have.

Two more DON’T points:

1) DON’T keep your lists on paper – write them on your computer (on an Excel spreadsheet perhaps), and print them out. If you “write them down,” as has been the goal planning mantra for the past 20+ years, you’re going to keep writing them over and over again, rather than having the ability to easily reprioritize. While constant writing is a great educational technique, and can really let you know (rather than just be aware of) all that needs to be done, what SHOULD be written down – on paper, and plastered upon the walls where you can see them – are your GOALS. Doing so creates that sense of permanence, and when you or someone else comes up with an idea, you can immediately see if it fits within your goals. So while you know where you’re going, your lists (how you get there) can then be easily shifted if you encounter detours in the road. Take advantage of the technology to help you do your work by using only ONE app.

If you need to track multiple projects with multiple components to meet multiple goals, then try Trello (Trello.com). It’s built on the Kanban methodology of used in program coding. If you liked to use index cards back in the day to keep your priority list, then you’ll love this. It works great on the computer, as well as on any mobile device.

2) DON’T items are not the same as “ideas.” I am a firm believer that ideas are acts of creative inspiration sparked by the Creator working through us if we are open to God’s will. Ideas are abstract, requiring exploration and investigation before they see the concreteness of your DO list schema. You can create a notebook of them in Evernote (www.evernote.com) which is a great place for “notes,” but not necessarily “do” items. Investigative steps could be on these lists, but if they make their way to the DON’T DO list, the idea might still be a good one – even if your role in God’s plan may be to relay it to someone else.

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