If you want to be productive, you have to crowd out the things that are less important by investing time in your priorities. You have to spend so much time doing the work that moves you close to your goals and vision that you don’t have time for things that aren’t as important.
First Things First
If you want to ensure that you make progress on your priorities each day, spend the first block of your productive time there. Before you do anything else, dedicate your time and energy to what’s most important to you.
Ninety minutes is enough time to make progress. But if you are going to invest the first ninety minutes on what’s important, you are going to have to avoid email, avoid the phone, avoid social media, and accept that some things that would normally command your attention are going to have to wait.
The people who are going to produce results in the age of infinite distractions are going to be those who have no fear of missing out.
Leaving Some Things Undone
If you are uncomfortable missing out on all the distractions and prompts that plague your day and steal your results, what you have to do next is going to make you really unhappy.
If you want to reach your goals and produce results, you are going to have to leave some things undone. You are going to have to accept that you have unanswered emails in your inbox. You will have projects, some important, that don’t get a minute of your attention and instead sit stagnating.
It’s tough to know that you have work that is not complete—and not getting any closer to being finished. But progress on what’s most important means that lesser priorities are treated as such. Completing what’s most important crowds out what isn’t.
By focusing on what’s most important, you crowd out what isn’t as important. You say “no” to small things by saying “yes” to bigger things.
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