Just a quick follow-up to my earlier blog post about my “Most Important Thing for Today” experiment.
My observations so far :
- I continue to get more of my important tasks done than before, simply because I’m not able to rationalize with myself when I in advance have decided on only one thing that I must do the next day. Because then it’s clearly that one thing that I must get done.
- I have procrastinated less on my most important tasks.
- Most days, I’ve had a great feeling of satisfaction because I got at least one important thing done. And this has a positive spin-off effect, because it has often motivated me to do additional things because I had already proved to myself that I could get things done.
- Most days, I my inner dialogue would be very positive (and definitely more positive than usual!). These days, I’m often telling myself “I can get things done!” and “Let me just get started on this task, because then I’m sure it is not as bad as I expect”.
- I’ve generally felt happier and more energetic. Which again means that I get even more things done.
- I’ve allowed myself to relax more and I have several times stopped working when I’m done with today’s tasks. Because I know that this was what I planned to do today. And I know that I’ll get another important task done tomorrow, so I don’t need to overwork myself.
- I feel more focused because it’s becoming more and more clear to me what my most important tasks are.
- I consciously have to decide which other important tasks that I must push to the following days instead of trying to pretend to myself that I can get everything done at once. This also makes me feel more focused and it makes me proud that I’m able to prioritize my tasks and my time this way.
So as you can hear, I’m still very excited and very happy with my experiment.
It still seems to make a real (and positive!) difference in my effectiveness.
Coming to think of it, I cannot think of a single negative side-effect or consequence so far.
I’ll make sure to keep you posted about new developments and my progress as I continue with the experiment.
PS: As explained in my original blog post, I still put many small, less important tasks on my to do-list. But this seems to work perfectly fine, and I don’t feel that I’m wasting my time or that I should put additional important tasks on my to do-list, because then I would probably end up being less focused again and lack energy and motivation. And the small tasks are mostly things that don’t fall into the same category as my most important tasks (such as buying groceries, backing up my laptop, writing to friends, blogging, chopping fire-wood, watching videos, etc.)