Dagwood on Task Management

Yesterday's Blondie:

There are so many opportunities open to us. We can pretty much do whatever we want to, and with much of it — family, work, church, community — other people ask a lot of us, too. If we're not careful, we can easily spend our time doing things that just plain aren't important.

Peter Lynch once paid a consultant to help him become more effective at work. The recommendation was to start the day by listing everything that he could do that day, then rank the list by order of importance. Start working on the most important task and don't stop until it's done. Move on to the second task. At the end of they day, you'll know that however much got done, you did the things that were most important for you to do today.

Some things aren't going to get done. Face it. Accept it. As long as you're doing things that are more important, it doesn't matter. Focus on the most important things you can do — what will make you the happiest, make the biggest difference, and have the longest impact — and let the rest go. It's just distracting you.