The five priorities

A useful measure in order for you to ensure that you concentrate on the things most important to you, is to write down your top five priorities.

After you have the list of five things, evaluate everything on your todo list in relation to the five priorities you have written down. Chances are that most of the things will not be related to the priorities listed.

Divide the list into three categories.

1. Essential items for living.

2. Items that directly contribute to your priorities, or support them in some way.

3. Everything else.

For the first category think about how to eliminate as many as possible, by automating or reducing the effort required to complete.

For the second category, examine whether they actually contribute towards your priorities, or are actually part of the third category.

For the third category, dump as many as you can, and start reducing the number of items of this nature coming in. You may need to learn how to say no.

Note that you can do this for your life overall, or restrict it to a particular domain, for example, your job.