Stop List Redux

Question: What are your top three time wasters?

Most people can identify these relatively easy and rank them from greatest to least. They often include both self-imposed activities (e.g. TV, Internet, Phone) and relationships (e.g. having the same 20-minute conversation daily, interruptions causes by unannounced visits by friends, family, peers, subordinates, and acquaintances).

Once you have identified these top three, you need to think about ways to reduce or, better yet, eliminate these from your life.

Entropy is a fact of the universe. This is why we wash our clothes, clean our houses, and take baths. This is why a Stop List is an essential tool to prevent ‘junk’ from creeping into your life.

Take 28 days to replace the biggest time waster first; this means substituting a new productive behavior for that old habit. For example, watching TV might be replaced with talking with family for a hour or going on a long walk every evening.

Then, move onto the second time waster once the first waster has been removed from your life. If you go through this process four times a year (create a top three Stop List), you’ll prevent major time loss to non-productive events.