41 lunch. Today is the day to start your ‘stop doing’ list, and here’s why.

I do too much and it’s not a good thing. It means that some stuff doesn’t
get done very well and other stuff doesn’t get done at all. I’m pretty
good at doing stuff for other people, I’m not quite as good at getting
stuff done for my business and I am nothing short of hopeless when it
comes to doing important personal stuff.

So a few months ago, when I was somewhat at the end of my tether I took
onboard a tip from uber-guru Jim Collins and started a Stop Doing list.

It’s been amazing.

I’m naturally something of a control-freak so I find it hard to not do
stuff. But the Stop Doing list seems to have cured me of that
affliction. I’m now working on the right stuff, saying ‘no’ to more
things and finally making progress on projects.

The Stop Doing list worked so well I thought I’d share it with you.

The Stop Doing List: what you do

1. I keep a list (in evernote but you can keep it wherever you want) of stuff to Stop Doing.
2. Whenever I do a job I either loathe or am hopeless at I pop it on the Stop Doing List
3. Every Monday I take a look at the list and pick one thing to commit to Stop Doing.
4. During
   the week I work out how I can off load the job. My aim is to have got
   rid of the job by the end of the week, but that’s not always doable:
   1. Sometimes
      the Stop Doing  is something I need to outsource, in which case there’s
      a bit of work in finding out the right person to outsource to, and
      evaluating the cost.
   2. At
      the beginning the Stop Doings were mostly things that I’d taken on to
      help someone out (or *confession time* been flattered to be asked to
      do). For example a couple of Stop Doings were writing articles for
      publications whose readers weren’t my core audience. These projects were
      a little harder to extricate myself from, but I made sure that I’d at
      least planned my exit plan by the end of the week.
5. Some
   of my Stop Doings are ideas for my business. I move these on to an
   Ideas List so this isn’t a ‘Stop Forever’ but rather a ‘Stop Fiddling
   With Now’. I leave looking at the Ideas List to my monthly “Think Time”
   – more on that in Friday’s Blog Post – which take a bit of self
   discipline but I end up with a better outcome than when I half start a
   heap of stuff.

A great little side benefit of the Stop Doing list is that it’s made me
much better at saying no to things before I start them! It really is a
lot less painful to simply not begin than it is to get stuff  off the
Stop Doing list. Effectively the Stop Doing list has encouraged me to
‘Say yes to less’. It feels good.

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